


Pause, Rewind, Play

by Zarla



Series: Vargas Stories [19]
Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Hallucinations, M/M, Original Character(s), PTSD flashbacks, Panic Attacks, Pining, Sexual Tension, Supernatural Elements, Touch-Starved, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships, creepy imagery, moral quandaries, some body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26728108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zarla/pseuds/Zarla
Summary: What a beautiful night. Edgar and Johnny are sitting together by that cliff he loves so much, discussing the moral character of the human race as they so often do. Nothing unusual about that. Everything's fine. Johnny isn't going to hurt him. He'd never. Why would he? What a beautiful night.Something is wrong here.
Relationships: Edgar/Scriabin, Johnny "Nny" C./Edgar Vargas
Series: Vargas Stories [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/20964
Comments: 29
Kudos: 63





	Pause, Rewind, Play

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhere during [chapter 27 of Vargas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/49492/chapters/65054).

It was really a beautiful night.

It wasn't just that the moon and stars were bright and beautiful above, completely unhidden by any kind of pollution, light or otherwise. It wasn't that the air was fresh and cool, with a slight breeze that kept it from being stifling. It wasn't even that the low background hum of the city below was at just the right volume to provide comforting white noise.

Edgar sat on the roof of Johnny's car, parked by the cliffside he was so fond of, and he didn't feel afraid at all.

He felt absolutely, totally safe.

No lock system, no demons, no monsters, no hallucinations. Everything made sense. Everything was okay. The relief was like releasing a clenched fist, like blood frozen in fear was finally flowing again.

Edgar looked over to him, watched him as Johnny stared out over the city below them. His eyes were still wide, bloodshot with lack of sleep, underlined with deep shadows. Still thin, still ragged, still all sharp lines and edges, although his hair was back.

There wasn't anything physically obvious about him that indicated that he had changed. It was really the _absence_ of something. He looked at Johnny, and he didn't see death. He _knew_ there was no death. No _fear_.

"I don't really understand how you do it," Johnny said, and it was the same scratchy, raspy voice, but it felt weightless. That resentment and bitterness about other people was still present, but it was entirely sectioned away from him. It didn't touch him. "We live in the same city, we encounter the same kind of people. You've seen what human beings are like. What they're capable of. The cruelty that comes so easily to them, the disregard for anyone's feelings but their own."

None of this was anything Edgar hadn't heard from him before. Then he heard a sigh, internally, and it was like a light came on to reveal a part of the room he hadn't seen.

_I really hate you, you know that?_ Scriabin sounded more resigned than anything else.

_Well... yes, but what specifically brought this on?_

_You are so uniquely frustrating. I'd almost believe that you practice at it when I'm not looking. This, in particular, is a masterful double bind, a skillful shutting of every avenue of escape that is so beyond your normal capabilities, it could only be subconscious._

Edgar sighed and rolled his eyes. _Would you like to explain why you're mad at me, or do you want to give more melodramatic speeches about how awful I am?_

_Do you want to explain to me why you want me to lecture you, again, about the actual impact of your actions?_

_I never want you to do that. You just do it anyway._

_You're aware that you're dreaming, right?_

Edgar glanced over at Johnny to find him completely frozen in place, like someone had hit pause on a VCR. That was a relief - it was easier to have a conversation with Scriabin when he didn't have to split his attention. He'd gotten used to doing it, Scriabin had forced him to get used to it, but that didn't make it easy.

_I've gathered._

_I don't suppose you recall, in those dusty vaults of your memories where you throw away things you don't care about, how you've pulled me into dreams I didn't want to be in before?_

Edgar frowned a little in instinctual hurt. _Of course I cared about that. You know how important that was to me._

_It mattered a great deal to you, until it didn't._ Scriabin's voice went lower. _Just like I did, until I didn't._

Edgar didn't know how to heal this. It still bled and itched between them, a metaphorical scar to match the ones still on his face. Apologies were pointless, so instead he reversed. _I mattered to you as long as I obeyed, as long as I never questioned what you were or what you wanted from me. As long as I stayed your little puppet, as you called me._

Hurt and anger blended between the two of them, as it often did whenever one of them reopened the wound again. It felt too big to ever cross, and he didn't know what to do.

_How perfectly ironic, for you to talk about caring about someone only as long as they are useful to you. As long as they play the role you've preordained for them. You always find new ways to torture me, and what's worse, you're so goddamn oblivious that you're doing it._

_You're still not explaining what I'm actually doing wrong._ Edgar sighed, pulling up his legs near his chest so he could rest his arms across his knees. He leaned his head on one hand, letting his eyes unfocus over the glittering city laid out in front of him. _You enjoy playing the victim so much, you should be thanking me for giving you the opportunity._

_Thanks for proving my point that you're a dick,_ Scriabin snapped. _Have you noticed yet that something in this dream is different?_

Edgar glanced over at Johnny, who was still frozen in place. The ambient noise from the city below continued. Something should have been weird about it, but it wasn't.

Scriabin sighed. _Of course, it's more difficult for you than it is for me. Tell me, what was in dreams we've shared before that isn't there now? Dreams in which I take a part, personally._

Edgar stared out across the city, and his eyes widened. _You're not a voice. You're a person._

_I'm always a fucking person, you fucking bastard,_ Scriabin snarled at him, and his anger made Edgar wince a little. _I'm physically visible is what you mean._

_I didn't mean... sorry._

_Whatever. But I'm not visible now, you'll notice._

All the calm, the ease began to recede, like an ocean wave retreating. In its place came concern and an attempt to reach out. _Why...? You're always visible when I'm dreaming. There's no reason you wouldn't be._

Scriabin wasn't expecting anything but further irritation, and, just a little, he could feel his hostility fade... just a little. _How much of today do you remember?_

That concern built further, Edgar's brow furrowing as he looked down at the city. Reality felt uncomfortably close now. _Probably not as much as you._ It was soft.

_How many panic attacks did you have?_ His voice was softer now as well, although Edgar could still sense his wariness.

_Two._ That he could remember. _The shower, and before I went to sleep._

He caught brief glimpses of them both - the lights snapping off in the middle of the shower, leaving him in pitch blackness, and the sounds, and something touching him. Trying to leave his bedroom, finding the door locked, the windows locked, before they slid up to the joint where the walls met the ceiling and disappeared, and as the wall scrolled upwards it became something else, and it reached out for him.

They were only brief glimpses before something waved them away, something brushed over him and his mind went blank. There was nothing for those few moments except the ambient sound of the city, the awareness of the air on his skin, the chirp of a few crickets, the smell of clean air.

He wasn't sure how long it was before he heard Scriabin sigh again, long and resigned. _This really is a perfect little trap you've made for me._

_Can you just explain? Please?_ Edgar felt tired, all of a sudden, and he hated feeling tired when he was sleeping. It was so unfair.

_I don't have to tell you that you're a little stressed lately. I've tried at times to calm you myself and yes, I know you don't believe me, you don't have to say it._

_I know you can control my dreams._

_I tried to show you the things you need, I tried to put you in situations that would stop your broken self-inflicted thought patterns, give you some much needed lucidity, but it never had the intended effect._

Edgar rolled his eyes. _I can't imagine why that is._

_It is strange._ Scriabin had a touch of animousity in his tone now. _I can read your thoughts, I can see everything you feel, I know what you want. And yet, you can't accept it when I give it to you._

_Because, I'm sure, you aren't giving me what I want, you're giving me what you think I should want._

_I'm not that short-sighted._ Although he was, and he caught a little spark of indignation from Scriabin as the thought crossed his mind. _I attribute it instead to my status as an outsider to your consciousness. You won't accept what I offer because it doesn't come from you._

_Or because I don't trust you._

Scriabin huffed. _Whatever you want to call it. The point is that it doesn't work, and it needs to work. You're near a breaking point, and I can't have you breaking, dear boy, that'd be very bad for me. Not to mention it'd severely hamper my 'getting us out of this alive' plans._

_Yes, I hate to be such an inconvenience to you._ Edgar rolled his eyes again. _Have you considered that yelling at me isn't a good way to calm me down? I was having a perfectly fine time here before you started haranguing me._

_Which brings us to the actual point._

_Finally._

_You created this scenario, Edgar. It's your dream. Have you thought to analyze it at all?_

_I wasn't really thinking about it until you showed up._

_You want to fix things. Make everything better. Escape to a place with no pain. And to be fair, I can't blame you for that. I want the same thing. Your vision of a 'fixed' reality isn't the same as mine though._

Edgar looked over at Johnny again, still frozen. He briefly tried out the thought of reaching out and touching him, something he knew he'd hate. The thought came and went with no fear.

_And of course, the least stressful scenario you can picture is this. Completely at ease with your one true love._

_He's not-_

_Beautiful night, everything perfect, no threat of death. I can already guess at what you're going to make Johnny say. All of this will play out perfectly, wrap you up in a blanket of safe, safe, safe. And all that damage you sustained during the day will stop throbbing and bleeding, and it will heal, and with your strength regained, we will be able to face tomorrow's horrors._

Safe. That word felt almost unfamiliar.

_That's the worst part of this, you realize. That it's necessary, and I know it's necessary, and I have to play my part in it. Because if I don't let you do this, it'll affect me whether I want it to or not. So I have to be an unwilling actor in your little perfect play. Out of sight, out of mind. You and Nny skipping off into the sunset together while I sit in the audience and throw popcorn at the screen._

Edgar wasn't sure what to say.

_As long as you're comfortable, that's what matters. Maybe some of it will trickle down to me. Maybe it won't. It won't matter either way, and it won't matter to you._

_It does matter to me._

_Ah ah ah._ It would have accompanied a chiding finger wag if Scriabin had been visible. He had a nasty tone in his voice. _You caring about me isn't part of this little fantasy of yours. That'd make things too complicated. Just think of me as your fun accessory to your dazzling, scintillating life. I'll ooh and aah at the screen at all the good parts, just like you want._

He was used to Scriabin making him feel bad, but not like this. This was a unique flavor of guilty.

_We don't... have to do this. Maybe we can do something you want instead._

_If we could, I'd be doing it. If you weren't one straw away from snapping your back, I would. Just get it over with. You'll forget about me soon enough._

_I can't forget about you. You're still... supposed to be here. If I wanted to forget about you, you wouldn't even be in this dream, right? If this is actually supposed to be the least stressful scenario I can picture, then you're still in it. Doesn't that mean something?_

Scriabin was quiet, and Edgar tried to reach out for how he was feeling but he shied away with a pulse of resentment. He could press harder, but he'd just make him more upset, and Edgar wasn't feeling great about any of this as it was.

_Hmph. Here's a question for the two of you to pointlessly ponder, for you and your little sockpuppet to pretend to debate. What's less insulting? Being kicked out of something entirely, or being invited in as long as you agree to be completely powerless?_

_It still means I want you here._ This was supposed to be freeing, it was supposed to be calming, but it felt increasingly like the walls were closing in on him. He didn't want Scriabin to be mad at him, not like this. That thought twisted its way upwards. _I just... want you not to hurt me._

His stomach felt tight, ingrained fear running deep at asking Scriabin for such a thing. He could feel it in the veins of the world around him, in the calm that now escaped him. Safe, that concept so foreign to him lately, carried the connotation of _not hurting_. He felt guilty for wanting that.

He could sense something dark, or unfamiliar coming from Scriabin, an emotion that was hard for him to read or decipher. It wasn't anger, he knew that one well, but it made him uneasy regardless. Guilt and fear could push Edgar in a few different ways, but this time it pushed him towards conciliation. _I can't control my dreams like you... they just happen to me. Otherwise I wouldn't have so many nightmares. You know about those._

There was a pause, which didn't make him feel any better. _I do,_ Scriabin said, somewhat reluctant.

_I'm sorry about this. I don't want to..._ Was it possible for a thought to trail off? It was too dangerous to finish it, to think _hurt you_ , but it was impossible not to. To try to hide it was to bring it into being.

There was a short pause, then Scriabin made a dismissive tsk. _And you call me a liar. You want to pretend things are better so badly, then let's pretend. Nothing I do seems to work, so fuck it._ He was genuinely bitter there. _What does it even fucking matter?_

_Scriabin..._ He reached out for him, and he almost, almost felt him reach back. Could almost feel him considering it, a desire to take the concern he was offering him. 

But he pulled back, as he always did.

_It's bad form for the movie to break the fourth wall. Here, let me rewind it for you. We can pick up where we left off. It'll be just like you want._

_Scriabin-_

_Stop feeling guilty, you're going to ruin it and then it'll really be for nothing._

Just like that, Johnny was moving again, back to life. "You've seen what human beings are like. What they're capable of. The cruelty that comes so easily to them, the disregard for anyone's feelings but their own."

Edgar blinked.

_And I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about disregarding people's feelings, would you, Johnny?_

It was a bit like being shoved onto a stage with another actor who started the scene without him. There was a role he was meant to play, a part meant for the three of them. If he hadn't consciously created this dream, then who was it that defined these roles? What kind of person was his subconscious? It wasn't Scriabin - he'd never accept a role like this. Not when it deprived him of his only chance to exist in any kind of physical form.

Johnny continued. "You've seen all of that. Reality. You've experienced it. Do you have any kind of hope for those people?"

"What do you mean by hope?"

Johnny stared out across the city for a little while, and Edgar couldn't track what he was looking at specifically. The pause almost felt empty without the worry that usually filled it.

"Hope that they can change. Become better. Master their animal impulses, look outside themselves to consider other people as beings worth their time and respect. Stop blowing their noses on their shirts in public. Squeaking their straws during a movie. Those kind of things."

_Always has his priorities in order, doesn't he?_

Edgar let out a long breath. The city under them looked harmless from this distance, all the people within blurred into nothing from here. "I don't think people will stop being annoying, if that's what you mean."

"Granted, but, do you think they could be less annoying? That they could learn, or be taught, to be better?"

Edgar stared into nothing. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen this many stars in the sky before.

"I don't know if everyone is willing to learn, or try." He spoke evenly, emotionless without motive. "There are some people who just refuse to listen to anyone. They'll never change their mind about something, no matter what you do."

"Yes, I've definitely met my share of _those_." Johnny clasped his hands around his knees, stretching out his arms. "There are people who _never_ learn. They'll never understand what it is they've done wrong."

_And most of them are lying in unmarked graves under his house. That is assuming he buries any of them. I doubt it. Do you think their families would agree with him? How many children do you think Johnny's orphaned?_

Edgar tried to ignore him. "Those kind of people... I don't have much hope that they'll ever change. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. But I think that there are some people who do want to be better. Who can be better. Or, who do want to care, but just don't know how. Who have something standing in the way, and if you just got rid of whatever that was, then they could change."

"Have you ever met someone like that? Someone where you felt they could... improve?"

_Oh, here it comes._ Scriabin put on a theatrical tone to his voice, like he was cupping his hands around his mouth. _Boooo!_

_Oh stop it._

_Booooo! I want a refund! This movie sucks!_

Edgar frowned at Scriabin, then caught himself and cleared his throat. Johnny was looking at him, but he didn't seem to notice his shift in expression.

_Johnny's never been exactly observant when it comes to you, you know. He never even noticed you talking to me half the time._

_It doesn't take that long to think something._

_A sentence, maybe. A monologue? A bit harder._

_I don't do monologues, you do monologues._

_Marvelously, I might add. Which doesn't detract from my point that Johnny is about as observant as a post. Which is ironic, given how much time he spends on his observations about the general state of humanity._

"I don't know if I've met anyone who seemed like they'd change, or that they even wanted such a thing," Johnny said. "Everyone I've met so far just doubled down on their horribleness when I confronted them about it."

_Can't imagine why holding a machete to someone's throat wouldn't get them to reconsider their poor opinion of you, Johnny._

"And the thought of meeting someone who wouldn't _need_ to change, someone who was actually decent enough to begin with that their life would have some kind of genuine worth, that there'd be a _point_ to them being alive..." Johnny twisted a hand at the stars above. "That seemed frankly impossible. After everything I've seen, the idea of it was practically ludicrous."

"You had no hope."

Johnny nodded. "You can only get shocked so many times before you stop touching the wires."

_A lesson you certainly never learned, my boy._

"After a certain point, you realize that there's a kind of baseline for the human experience, for the rot that dwells inside all of us, clogging up the gears." Johnny closed his hand, his fingers trembling with the strain of it, before he seemed to remind himself where he was, or at least of his point. "There'd be no reason to expect anything different from people. No reason to prepare yourself _for_ anything different. When things die, they don't come back." And he paused, a hand to his mouth in thought. "Well, usually they don't. I guess we're the exception to the rule. But I've killed a lot of things and none of those ever came back. That can apply in a more metaphorical sense as well... once hope died, I was not expecting it to come back."

_Fun reminder that he kills people for fun. Lots and lots of people. Not that you seem to care at the moment. What do they matter, after all? If you wanted this to be a perfect, stress-free scenario, why does Johnny still kill things? Is your perfect Johnny still a serial killer? That doesn't speak very highly of you, you know._

_I didn't make this scenario, I told you. I can't control these things._ Edgar frowned again, trying to get the image of the bodies in Johnny's house out of his mind. _I don't want him to hurt any more people._

_Then why is he still doing it? Why is he talking about it? Why didn't you just erase all of his murders, just like you erased all the other parts of him you don't like? You might as well be thorough._

_I can't control it! You know I can't, how many times do I have to say this? How many nightmares have you seen me in, how many dreams have you trapped me in yourself? How much proof do you need?_

_Sounds like an excuse to me._

_You can change dreams, we both know you can. Why don't you change Johnny into what you want him to be? Unless you're doing this as a roundabout way to shame me for something you have control over. Is this really even a dream of mine, or are you just lying to me about that, too?_

_Maybe you just can't conceive of who Johnny is without him murdering other people._ He hated it when Scriabin ignored him. _Like the core of his identity is the fact that he ends others. Who is he outside that to you? You can't even imagine. Even in your fondest fantasies, you can't separate him from that._

_It isn't who he is, it's something that he does._ He looked over and saw that Johnny was paused again. Something flickered over his eyes, but it was too quick for Edgar to see what it was clearly. _It's something he's factually done, to an extent it's why I'm even here. It's why you're here._ And he heard Scriabin take in a breath. _It isn't his identity, it's his context._

_Ever the valiant white knight. Can you not even imagine one alternate path that could have brought us to this point without someone dying? Although that'd require you to flex those atrophied imagination muscles of yours, and who knows, that might blow them out completely._

_There's more to who someone is than just what they do, or what they've done._

_How much more?_

_Is the entirety of your identity just the things you've done to me? Are you nothing outside of your actions, does your self not exist outside of what you've done? Is all you are just the evidence of your cruelty and spite? If it applies to Johnny, then it'd apply to you too, wouldn't it?_

And Scriabin didn't have to say anything for him to know his response. It ran all the way through him, dark hyphae of pain and anger he couldn't force away if he tried.

"Once hope died, I was not expecting it to come back," Johnny said, suddenly back to life, as though he was trying to keep Edgar's attention. He was oddly precise with that - Edgar would have noticed if he wasn't dreaming. "Everything and everyone I encountered only seemed to emphasize that losing hope was the right choice, the most intelligent conclusion to come to. All anyone cared about was building themselves up on the backs of others. None of them ever did anything to justify the air and food they consumed as they shoved their way through life. None of them deserved anything they got, except their untimely ends." Johnny paused, tilting his head as he looked at him. "Does your religion say anything about which people deserve to live?"

"Mm..." Edgar scratched at his face, something ominous and close to fear and resentment from somewhere within. He wasn't sure who it was coming from, although he guessed the resentment was Scriabin's. "I prefer to think of it as which people choose to be saved."

_Since that gives you a nice loophole out of all the sinning you've done and continue to do. Do you think you deserve to live more than any of those other people?_

_Do you?_

And he was quiet again, although that black angry thing in him writhed more strongly now.

"Choose to be saved?" Johnny sounded a little dubious about the concept, which wasn't a huge surprise. He looked back out over the city, brow furrowed in thought. "That implies that every life, no matter how awful and selfish, has some kind of inherent worth, doesn't it? That every life _could_ be saved, regardless of whether or not it actually deserves it."

" _Could_ is an important word there." Edgar kept scratching, staring out over the city as well now. "As I said... some people will never change, no matter what you do. And as you said, some people don't want to be helped. And that's their choice. There's nothing you can do." Edgar had never been one for proselytizing.

_That would require you to interact with other people._

"If someone rejects the opportunity to change or become decent, if they reject your 'salvation'..." With the disdain Johnny often had when it came to spiritual matters of this sort. "Then what worth does their life actually have? Why are they even alive, except as a warning to others about what not to do?"

"Why are any of us alive?" Edgar realized what he was doing and jerked his hand away from his face. His skin felt warm where he'd been scratching, but at least it didn't hurt... he'd caught himself in time. "None of us chose to be alive, none of us were given the option to live or not live before we did so. We were given life by our parents for one reason or another without our input."

Scriabin was quiet, which was unusual in itself, but it felt like there was something hiding behind it, something he couldn't quite get the form of. He reached out for it, and Scriabin shied away from him again, harder this time with a flare of defensiveness and anger, and what might have been a touch of doubt.

Johnny hummed in thought, still staring over the city. His voice was heavy. "It's difficult to think of life as a gift. All it's ever been for me is torture."

And Edgar felt that cold worry run through him, that slight pickup in his heartbeat. _Please don't talk about suicide again..._

_Really, it'd be doing everyone a favor._

_And don't you start either._

"All of it seems so pointless." Johnny held out his hands, his fingers curled, looking into his palms. "All of it just exercises in suffering, whether I was inflicting it or enduring it. What's the point of it?" He closed his hands and looked back over the city. "That's what I thought... that's how I felt. And I didn't expect that to ever change. Nothing ever even suggested that anything could change. Not even myself, or what I thought was myself... or what had been myself, before it got taken away from me."

_His voices._

"Everything got taken away from me..." His voice grew softer. "At least... I think it did... even a lot of my memory is gone now. I wonder what that other Johnny was like. The one who could remember. The one before all the irredeemable violence."

_Weren't we just talking about this?_ There was a tinge of that usual smug mockery, but there was something else to it. Something a little confused, a little wary.

Edgar looked up at the sky, at the moon glowing above. "It can be hard not to think about how things might have been, if certain things in your life had changed." _God knows you're familiar with THAT flavor of desperate regret._ "If you'd taken different paths, if you'd made different choices... if you'd known different people."

"If you'd be the same person without your circumstances."

"Yes..." He got the urge to scratch at his scars again and shoved it back down. _Of course, that'd almost be too obvious an underline to his point._ "There are so many things that comprise a person's identity... even someone's mood can seem to change who they are, if just for that moment."

_Like all the times he flipped out for no reason and tried to stab you, even though he swears that he likes you. No wonder Mr. Uncontrollable Moodswings constantly feels unstable._

"Even the people you know," Johnny said, in that quiet voice again. "All the garbage I've buried, all of that had a hand in who I am right now."

_Is the record skipping? Not that the two of you haven't gone around in circles over the same basic concepts before._ Although Scriabin sounded warier now.

"We're shaped by our experiences, yes." Edgar wasn't sure what else to say. He didn't want to put the responsibility for Johnny's heinous acts on his victims, and he expected Scriabin to take him to task for thinking such a thing, but he didn't. He seemed oddly distracted.

"If so, it'd make sense that I'd become an extension of all that senseless hate. All the same shit from the same place, a bucket of shit crabs afraid to let anyone make it out. No hope of anything else." Johnny kept staring out across the city, quiet and again the absence of fear left the moment feeling strange. His eyes slowly drifted downwards, then he turned to look at Edgar.

"Then I met you."

_Ah, we get to the real meat of it now. How nice to have someone extol your non-existent virtues! Praise the false idol of your sainthood! Worship your golden calf! How soothing it is to have someone tell you how right and good you are. Of course it's what you want._

_Like you wouldn't love having me do that for you,_ Edgar snapped at him, indignant and a little defensive. It wasn't as though he could read this dream Johnny's mind any more than he could the real one. He had no idea where this conversation was going.

And was it so wrong to want someone to give him a compliment for once...? As far as compliments went, it wasn't even that effusive.

_You should do that for me,_ Scriabin said, although he sounded a little sulky. Apparently, Edgar had caught him off-guard.

_You'd think you do it enough for yourself as it is._

_I don't know if you should be throwing stones from your ego-masturbatory glass house, considering what we're doing right now._

"I really thought that when you woke up, you'd be like the others. I was sure of it. And then you... weren't. And then when I explained what I was going to do, how things had to be, I was sure you'd change into one of them. Another screaming mite, driving noise into my ears against my will, unable to engage with me like a real person or put any thought into anything I was saying. I expected it... I was _waiting_ for it. But you didn't."

Edgar looked down at his shoes on the car hood. His voice had gone colorless again. "I remember asking you what I'd done to deserve it."

He glanced over at Johnny to see him looking guilty, open regret on his face that felt sincere instead of a reason to be cautious or skeptical. It was something, he realized, that he wanted to see in regards to this.

_All the power in the world to grant yourself wishes, and this is what you waste it on? Not even a pair of angel wings? Not that you'd deserve them._

"I thought... I really thought, after everything I'd seen and everyone I'd known, I was sure there'd be _some_ reason... I was sure you'd turn out to be like everyone else in some way..."

"That there'd be a reason for what you were doing. That my life wasn't really worth anything, except in helping to prolong yours. That was all that mattered to you."

"...I didn't even like my life _that_ much." Johnny rubbed his upper arm. "And I was still going to go through with it... I was this close to doing it."

"I remember." He still had nightmares about what that machine could have done to him.

"I was going to kill you, someone like you, for _that_..." Johnny looked down, unable to meet his eyes. "If anyone ever had a reason for being mad at me for what I was doing, if anyone ever had a reason to become one of those screaming mites... but instead, you... listened. You listened to me. You've always listened to me."

"I've tried to."

"And so few people can even try to do _that_." Johnny shook his head, then looked up again, alive again with sudden energy. "And that's what I don't understand... I still don't understand it. I don't know if I'll ever understand it. If we're the sum of all of our experiences, if our interactions with others contributes to who we are and what we become... how are you the way you are?" Johnny's gaze was intense, but safe. "Is there a secret cabal of good people out there that you hang out with that you won't tell me about?" And he tilted his head with an admitting frown. "Well, I can see why you wouldn't. That probably wouldn't end well."

Something in Edgar warmed at the word _good_ , and he heard Scriabin make a dismissive tsk. "In our circumstances... well, with yours at the least, I don't think it's so simple. As you've said, you had external influences working against you... everything hateful around you got channeled in your direction."

_Wasn't it Satan who said that?_

_It doesn't really matter._

Edgar struggled to find the right metaphor. "If all you're given are razor blades... you're going to end up cut, one way or another. What you went through isn't a normal human experience. The lock system... took a lot of things away from you. It changed reality around you, even. I think it's difficult to compare what you became due to that to how other people handled such things."

"But, even without a lock system funneling hate into them, all the other goblins out there are just as hateful and selfish." Johnny gestured over the city below them. "They don't have that excuse. Why aren't you like them? You're the only person I know who isn't."

_Except Devi, presumably, although I doubt you're going to let him mention her here. You're so jealous! It's cute._

_I'm not- I'm not jealous!_

_Ha. Adorable._

"Well..." Edgar steadfastly refused to acknowledge how warm his face had become. "As I said, someone's identity is created from a thousand different things... I don't know if I can give you any singular reason for it. But..."

"I do want a reason," Johnny said, although it wasn't a threat or a request.

"It'd be a lot easier if people could be explained so simply, right?" Edgar gave him a thin smile. "You were shaped by the people around you... so, I guess you could say I was shaped by the people that _weren't_ around me."

"How did you avoid them?" Johnny tilted his head. "It feels like I can't take a step outside my door without someone being a shit right in front of me."

"Like I said... reality itself was conspiring to constantly make that the case for you. It wasn't anything you, or even those people, were doing consciously."

_Whatever helps you sleep at night._

Edgar shook his head a little to regain his train of thought. "And... I avoided them by just... avoiding everyone. Well, not intentionally..."

_Yes, intentionally._

"People notice you all the time, and people... don't notice me. And, while that has its own problems, it does mean that I don't... meet the same kind of people you do, most of the time. Or at least, not as often." Something felt strange about saying this, a kind of guilt he couldn't place.

"So, it's just because you didn't encounter those kinds of people enough...?"

"I think..." Edgar tapped his chin in thought. "I think it's easier to not be a shit if you aren't constantly drowning in it, if that makes sense."

"Does it come from a place of ignorance then?" Johnny tilted his head in a kind of regard that would have, in other circumstances, made him nervous. "That you simply haven't seen how shitty the world can really be?"

"No, I have seen it. I've seen how it's treated you, among others." _And you've told me about it at length._ "I know that the world we live in can be extremely cruel and thoughtless, and often is to everyone."

"So then why? This is what I always get stuck on... this is what I have so much trouble understanding. If you know what the world is like, if you know what _people_ are like... how can you have any hope in them? How can you believe that any of them can change? Everything in our current reality conspires to make one believe the exact opposite, and yet." And a moment where Johnny looked almost vulnerable, something genuine under his words. "You do believe that people can change, don't you?"

"I do."

Edgar thought about that wheezy mime who'd followed him through the park that one day. 

"Well... not _every_ one, but..."

Johnny looked down and away, that vulnerable thing coming forward more strongly, the tentativeness that came with asking a question entirely genuine. "You don't feel that way about me, do you?"

"That you're... unsaveable?"

"That I can't change."

There was no threat of death to influence his answer now. He knew that the knife Johnny had in his boot was going to solidly stay there, regardless of what happened next.

_That's right, children, in your dreams you can do anything!_

_Shut up._

"I think you can change... in at least some ways, if you really wanted to. If you really made the effort."

_Sure, fake Johnny can be whatever you want. Let's make him a weird-looking bird next._

_Shh!_

"If I had help...?" Johnny tilted his head at him a little, still with that look in his eyes.

Edgar ventured a smile back to him. "It can be easier to make better choices if someone's helping you, yes. Or it can be easier to change with someone supporting you as well."

_It's a lot easier to make bad choices when someone's 'helping' you as well._

_You'd know a lot about that._

Scriabin made a hilarious little offended gasp, enough so that Edgar's smile became genuine.

"Do you think that's it then?" Johnny looked away at the sky. "That those people out there don't have anyone to help them get better? Anyone that they want to get better _for_?"

"You did say that the only thing they cared about was themselves... that makes it a little hard to develop that kind of relationship with anyone."

_Unless they'll slit your throat if you don't. Do we know anyone in a relationship like that? Should we throw the question to the audience and see what they think?_

_Shh._

_Are you going to mention that being threatened into helping someone not kill people isn't exactly the kind of relationship the two of you are talking about?_

_It might be coerced, but that doesn't mean it's ineffective. Change is change, even if the methods of achieving that are..._

_Yeah, you've done a bang-up job of changing him so far. Ineffective is an understatement. If you had any shame, your constant failure at accomplishing anything would have had you leave him long ago._

_It's not like I have a choice. You were just talking about a knife to the throat._

_The record's skipping again! Someone call the management!_

"...I don't want to be what I was." Johnny looked down. "I told myself so many times that I was better, that I was doing something important, that I could force understanding onto everyone I met... and all of it just made me feel worse in the end. All of it inept attempts at bandaging a sucking chest wound."

_Wonder how many of those he's generously given people._

"Then you've taken the first step that so many people never do." Edgar leaned forward onto his knees. "You _want_ to be better. You want to stop hurting people."

_You want him to want to stop hurting people. Your little fantasy Johnny is so unrealistic, you might as well have him vomiting gems whenever he talks so you can be rich as well as morally superior. Maybe he can pull a halo out of his pocket for you next._

"I want to find out who I am outside of all of this. Outside of whatever broken thing in my mind makes me do these things... makes me incapable of seeing anything but shit when I look at people." He paused, and he stared down at his steel-toed boots, tracing out a circle on the metal with one fingertip. "I don't see that when I look at you."

_Saint Edgar the selective. He has the power to save your life, but won't if it makes his crazy boyfriend sad! Accepting donations from 9 to 6._

_He's not my boyfriend._

_Can't even give yourself that in your perfect little dream scenario? That's pretty sad, actually._

_This dream isn't mine, I didn't make this!_

_Right, it's just a coincidence that everything he says comes around to what a good person you are. Just a coincidence._

"You're not like them... you actually _are_ better than them, not like I pretended to be. I want to be that. I want to be whoever I used to be, I want to be someone different. It has to be better than what I am now."

_A psychotic serial killer? Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty low bar._

"And it's strange to think that to some extent, it's because of you." Johnny tapped the toe of his boot, not looking up. "That one exception could so totally change my perspective."

_And you accuse me of being self-important?_

"...I've done a lot of bad things to you," Johnny said, softly. "I scarred your face and I don't even remember why I did it."

_And there was the time he knocked you unconscious, and when he stabbed you in the shoulder, and he tried to kill you when he fell asleep on you, and when he tried to kill you when you refused to taze him in the brain, and..._

"And even so, you tried to help me... you're still trying to help me. You won't give up on me, and I don't understand why. I don't understand how you could have faith in me, of all people. But you do, you do and that... that makes me want to try."

Edgar wasn't sure what to say.

_Being a passive doormat can make a psycho stop murdering people? Amazing. If you kissed him you could probably cure his schizophrenia completely._

_That's not-..._ He was feeling warm again, he hated it. _That's not how it works._

_Maybe you'd rather lay your hands on him to drive his demons out. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you? In this little dreamland of yours, he'd probably enjoy it as much as you would. It'd have to be more interesting than this._

_Would you stop?_

_You didn't say I was wrong,_ Scriabin said in an irritating sing-song tone.

"I never said I was sorry." Johnny had turned his head away from him now, curled in a ball. Edgar blinked at him. Was that what they'd been talking about...? There was only a vague sense that something wasn't adding up, and it faded quickly. "I've never apologized to you for everything I've put you through, and you're the one person in the world who deserves it."

And this was, Edgar realized with an emotion he didn't expect, something he'd also wanted to hear. He rightly should have felt satisfaction or something positive, but it seemed more akin to stunned disbelief.

_This is definitely something that'll only happen in a dream._

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I'm like this." Still, Johnny wouldn't look at him. "Sorry I tried to kill you that time. And all those other times."

_Want to add in future times while we're at it, Johnny?_

"It's alright." It was the natural, instinctual response to someone apologizing to him, even if it wasn't.

"And, I'm not going to do it again, or try to do it again. I'm really not this time. I'm going to try really, really hard not to."

Under normal circumstances, Edgar might have been skeptical, but in the aura of peace around them both, it was perfectly believable.

_I sort of wish Nny would really pull a knife on you just so you'd stop being so fucking smug about this._

"And, it's weird but... I actually think I can do it. Not just not gutting you, I mean everything." Johnny finally looked up, holding his arms out as if to encompass the city. "I really feel like I can find who I was. Or who I want to be, anyway. I feel like I can be better. Like I can really try. I haven't killed anyone since we talked last, did I tell you that?"

Edgar blinked, the words didn't register at first. "Really?"

Johnny nodded, looking at him now with total sincerity, in a way almost guileless. "You have no idea how hard it was, but I did it. Well, didn't do it. You know what I mean."

And then Johnny smiled. It was small and controlled, knowing, and it came with a warmth and satisfaction that was a nice complement to the comfort of everything around him. Johnny's smiles were no longer warnings to brace himself for a possible oncoming storm. He might just be happy, which was a thought that should have had way more weight than it had. In the current clear night air, it held nothing but itself.

"And, this is the thing that really breathed life into the husk of whatever hope I once had..." His smile grew wider. "I suspected, I knew they were connected, but it wasn't until it actually happened that I could believe it. That I could really take control of my life again."

"What was it?"

_Maybe he took up taxidermy._

_Shh! I want to hear this._

"Edgar..." So often when Johnny said his name it was a warning, so often it was asking him who he was, addressing him as a stranger and often a threat. It wasn't now. Johnny was smiling and he said his name with such _fondness_. It was so much, he wasn't sure how to feel about it. "I wanted to paint again."

Edgar's hand went to his open mouth unconsciously, he stared but Johnny's smile didn't falter. "Really?"

"I did!" Gleeful now, it was simply infectious. "I couldn't actually do it, I don't know where all my supplies have gone... I mean real paint, not blood paint."

_Lest you forget for even a second who we're dealing with here._ Although Scriabin sounded like he knew Edgar wasn't listening.

"All I could do were a few sketches, I couldn't quite get what I saw out of my head... I couldn't quite pin it down." And he looked away in mild frustration at it, but it was brief. "But, I can still see it! I still want to get it out, I still want to make it. I want to go out and get the things that will allow me to make it, and I don't even want to kill anyone along the way!"

"That's..." Words felt inadequate, and the warmth all encompassing. "That's great, Nny... that's wonderful."

"And you... you're one of the things that makes me want to do that. You're why I even made it happen. You did that." And his smile softened into something sad, that guilt rising up again that looked strange on his face. "And I almost killed you... I almost deprived myself of that, just because I felt like I had to..." He grimaced in self-directed anger. "Because I was _lazy_ and couldn't find someone else. I can't believe I almost took away one of the few things that makes life not total shit all the time. And I thought I was doing something _productive_."

_Wow, killing people is bad? My suspension of disbelief here is totally shattered._

"...Whenever I go out now, whenever I expose myself to them again... I think of you." He wasn't looking at him as he said it, but for some reason Edgar felt the hair on his arms raise. "I think about what I almost did to you... how you must have felt, and what you decided to do with that. What you're still deciding to do, regardless of how little I've done to deserve it. I think about you, and I try to imagine what you would do... how you would feel. And then I can fight the urge back down." 

_Basic human empathy? Someone give this man a trophy!_

"I don't understand how you do it, and I don't understand how _I'm_ doing it. After all this time, I thought it was impossible. And that means even the most irredeemable person can change. Doesn't it?"

Edgar still felt a little overwhelmed, and for once it was with positive feeling. Not only had Johnny rediscovered something he'd lost, was finding a new self, was _not going to hurt any more people_ , but it was because of his influence. He'd done something right.

Scriabin made a more disgusted tsk sound this time.

"That is, essentially, what I said before..." Edgar was smiling without thinking. "The question of choice, if people want to change... if people decide to be saved, and put in the work to make that happen."

"That even a life like mine can have some kind of worth..." Johnny looked down, a little thoughtful, and for some reason Edgar was taken with the urge to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Your life means something to me."

_Booooooo! I saw this coming like an hour ago! I'm not paying for this!_

_Stop it, you're being childish._

_I'M being childish?_

Johnny looked up and gave him a weak smile. That urge to touch him grew stronger. "That's what I said to you before... that's what I meant. You care about people, even if they're broken. Even if they don't deserve it. What an impossible thing to do."

"It's not impossible... just very difficult." He wanted to brush the hair out of his face. Where were these thoughts coming from?

_They sure as hell aren't coming from me._ Scriabin sounded very bitter.

"And if anyone is willing to change... if anyone is willing to put in the work, as you put it, to improve themselves... you'd support them."

_Of course he'd think you can carry the world's sins. You can't even carry your own, you make me carry them for you._

He never liked agreeing with Scriabin, but he had to admit, the thought did make him a little uncomfortable. "Well, it'd depend on who it is, or if I knew them. That'd be a little difficult to do for a complete stranger..."

"You don't think there's a point of no return for people? Where what they've done, or who they are, can't be changed to something better? Provided they want to change, I mean."

"Like I said... I think everyone _can_ choose the path to salvation, even if they ultimately choose not to. That's kind of a core tenet of the whole thing. Forgive us our trespasses, and all that..."

Johnny stared at him blankly. Right, of course he wouldn't know.

"It's a... God thing," Edgar said, in an awkward effort to fill the silence. A few more seconds went by, although they felt much longer.

"You had hope in me, and I ended up changing, even when I had no hope for myself." Johnny tilted his head at him slightly. "Do you have hope that Scriabin can become a better person too?"

_Woah what the fuck?_ Scriabin sputtered. _What? What?? Why did you make him say that? What the fuck!_

_It wasn't- it wasn't me, I didn't make him say that!_ Edgar noticed vaguely that Johnny was on pause again. He had to assume Scriabin was the one doing that.

_Don't drag me into your little Sunday school sermons about morality and forgiveness!_

_I didn't! Why would I do that?_

_You tell me! This is your dream!_

_I can't control it!_

_It's not enough for you to make me an unwilling spectator, now you're going to have Johnny of all people judge my moral fucking character?_

_I'm not doing this! I didn't tell him to say that!_

_Then who's doing it, Edgar?_ Scriabin snapped back at him. Then, something odd happened.

_Which one of us is doing this?_ they thought, or said, at the same time.

And they both fell back into startled silence. For everything that the two of them shared, Edgar couldn't remember anything like that happening before.

_You can read my thoughts..._ Edgar ventured, after a few moments. _Did you hear me thinking that? Thinking about him saying that?_

After a brief pause, Scriabin made a quiet, annoyed sound, reluctant admission. _No._

Edgar looked back at Johnny, who remained frozen. There was a bit of fuzziness near his edges, the colors going just slightly off. Again he thought of the VCR.

_I don't want to talk about this either,_ Edgar thought, quietly. He braced himself.

There was a long pause. Then, Scriabin said, just as quiet and far more cold, _Well, clearly you do._

"Do you think Scriabin can become a better person too?" Johnny said, in the same conversational way, suddenly back to life. Edgar blinked.

_Did you do that?_

_What does it fucking matter what I do at this point,_ Scriabin grumbled, his resentment so palpable that he could almost touch it. _This is such bullshit._

The danger now didn't come from Johnny, or the proximity to the cliffside, or any tangible thing he could see or touch. Edgar thought about what Johnny had asked, and answers faintly tried to bubble up but he shut them down, afraid to even think them with the mental air so charged. It wasn't in words, but _don't hurt me_ was escaping his efforts to hide it, and he was sure Scriabin could sense it, but he wasn't saying anything.

"That's a complicated question to answer." Edgar pulled his knees up to his chest. It wasn't what he wanted to say, really, but that didn't make it untrue.

When he looked over to him, he found Johnny watching him, with that slight head tilt of interest he often had. Waiting for him to continue.

"I wasn't expecting you to... bring him up." Edgar stared down past the hood of the car, to the weeds clinging to the rocks and counted the blades of them. _I didn't think you knew about him._ And his scars began to itch. _When is this happening...?_

_This isn't real, Edgar._ Scriabin dragged it out, exaggerated and long-suffering. _Dreams don't make sense. Idiot._

"Well, he's kind of important to you, isn't he?" Johnny said, still quite casual. He was also still a little fuzzy at the edges, which was probably fine. "He's not really going anywhere."

Edgar didn't have to reach out to be able to tell that Scriabin was angry, but more than that he was confused.

"No, he's not." Edgar looked away from the weeds and back up to the clear sky. It was an odd feeling as it left his mouth, like there was tension surrounding the words, and none that was actually in them, like something released once they were out.

Still angry, still confused, and under that, Edgar could detect a trace of surprise from him. He wasn't sure why - it was something they both knew. It wasn't even something they hadn't said to each other before.

"And he's hurt you, hasn't he?" Johnny said, in a different voice. Edgar couldn't quite place who it belonged to. His boss? It might have been one of his coworkers. "Sort of like I hurt you. Well, he didn't slash up your face or anything. You know what I mean."

Edgar got the feeling he was trapped between a rock and a hard place, and the tension internal was getting almost unbearable. _I don't want to talk about this,_ he thought, to no one, although that didn't mean no one heard it.

_Perfect little victim, suffering little saint. Pay no mind to the devil on your shoulder. What is he other than a visual metaphor, an advocate for a side someone like you could never have, no no. Nothing more than dust in the wind._

_I don't want to hurt you._ It was very quiet and weak.

_No, that would be a sin, wouldn't it? You'd never do that, would you?_

"I know he's hurt you before," Johnny said, in that same different voice. "Like when he lied to you about that time in the church." Johnny apparently knew about that now. "But, do you think that means he'll always hurt you? That he'll never decide to be better?"

Edgar stared into the darkness of the sky between the stars, his teeth clenched tightly.

"I know I've done awful things. Awful, unforgivable things. Awful, unforgivable things to _you_." Johnny leaned back, his grip around his knees keeping him upright as he stared directly up into the sky. "I'm capable of so many more awful things, I know I am. But, I don't want to do those kind of things to you. Not anymore. I want to be better. I want to change." A pause. "I want you to trust me."

"Mm." Everything felt so tense, it was like he was going to snap.

"Do you think he wants you to trust him?" Johnny was back to his normal voice again.

Edgar knew the answer to this question. They both did. He didn't have to reach out to find that same blend of anger and confusion, a wariness that he recognized in himself that injury could be imminent.

"He does," Edgar said, eventually. He got the impression that Scriabin wanted to disagree, but couldn't.

"Do you think he wants to trust you?"

Edgar blinked, then turned to look at Johnny. He was just staring at him the same way, still a bit fuzzy, his colors just a bit off, a few tracking lines near his foot. There wasn't anything overtly wrong about him, or anything that should have gone with a question that had so much impact.

Anger, indignation now, and under that was pain, and under that was the slightest hint of fear, but that couldn't be right.

_Why would I ever-_ Scriabin sounded unsteady. _What would be the point of-..._

"I've... never thought about it." It was hard to meet Johnny's eyes, and instead he stared through the flickering fuzziness by his shoulder. He should have thought of it, the feeling came to him strongly, and guilt followed.

_Of course you wouldn't think..._ Scriabin said, although it had no teeth to it.

"You've hurt Scriabin too, haven't you?"

He winced, his chest ached, and he felt an echoing pain from Scriabin, although it was a different kind. Guilt weighed on him heavier, and it didn't even occur to him to try to lie. It wasn't even that lying while Scriabin was listening was pointless. 

"I have done that," Edgar said, quietly, looking down at the car.

"Do you think you can be better?" Johnny said, unmoving. "Do you think you can change, too? You don't want to hurt people."

"I don't."

"Do you have hope for yourself? Do you believe in your own capacity for self-improvement? That you can want to change?"

"I..."

It was hard to breathe, for some reason. He knew what he wanted to say.

And then he wondered, if Scriabin had a subconscious... where would it manifest? What would it want?

_Don't... blame this on me._ His voice was weak. _I have nothing to do with this._

Edgar hesitated on the edge of something, and he wasn't sure what it was. Whatever danger had run through him had changed shape, became strange, it wasn't gone but it wasn't the same. What was this moment? Nothing felt right.

He thought of the dead boy, the urging, the pleading to take care of himself.

"I've tried," he said, forcing his way through whatever was trapping him, struggling to keep the pathway open. "I want to try. I want things to be better. I want to be better. I want to do that. I want to fix things, but I don't know how. I want to stop hurting him, and I want him to stop hurting me." He pressed his hands to his head. "I want to stop hurting."

He wasn't sure what he felt from Scriabin now. Johnny was just watching him, without the off-color fuzz.

"Does he want any of those things?" Johnny tilted his head. "Something like that is going to take both of you."

"I don't know... I don't know what he wants."

"Have you ever asked him?"

Edgar was sure that he had, he must have... when he tried to remember, all that came to mind were screaming arguments, the question meant as an attack or an attempt to deflect and defend. Heated and insincere.

Had Scriabin not been so distracted, surely he would have jumped on that chance to berate him for his self-absorption.

_What do you want, Scriabin? What do you want from me?_ This time, it was quiet and honest. He reached out with an open hand.

There was a flurry of feeling from him, the impression of him grabbing frantically at it to try and hide it again, control it and tamp it down. Resentment, confusion, that gun-shy trepidation, that echo of the burns Edgar carried. And there was that fear that had to be a mistake, he couldn't imagine its source, and a kind of self-hatred, and a striking sense of longing and hurt. All of it he could feel him fighting, all of it he could feel him struggling to hide from him.

_I want something I can't have._ His voice shook.

_But what is it?_

_There's no point,_ Scriabin said, in that same weak voice, before he took a breath and it strengthened a little. _There's no point, look where I am. Look where you put me. That says it all._

_Do you want me to stop hurting you?_

_Of course._ He cleared his throat. _I'm not a masochist like you._

_Do you want to stop hurting me?_

Some part of him thought, feared, knew that he'd say no, and he braced himself for it. 

Instead, Scriabin said nothing.

_Do you want things to be better?_ Edgar's voice was falling.

_...Of course._ His voice wasn't shaking anymore, although it was still quiet. _That's why I let this whole farce play out. I need you to..._ And he paused, he could feel him catch himself, feel him wage war against whatever emotions he was hiding from him, debate what he should say. Edgar kept his hand outstretched, kept his patience. _I need you to... take care of yourself. Even if this... pathetic fantasy is how to do it._ And he could picture Scriabin curling into a ball, his arms tight over his chest. _I can't take care of you._ It was a painful admission, a wounded mumble. _Not like this._

_You want to..._

That tangled morass of feelings again, and the struggle to tamp them down. His voice was shaking again. _There are a lot of things I want that I can't have._ He took in a breath, apparently to regain his focus, and he forced lightness into his tone. _For us not to go insane and kill ourselves, for one. Which is the only reason I'm doing this, for the record._

_Do you want things to be better between us...?_

_So you could accept what I offer you, instead of turning to facsimiles of him?_ Edgar refocused on Johnny, who wasn't paused this time, but was still watching him silently. _So I could actually help you, instead of watching you re-enact your trauma in new and excitingly damaging ways? So you could stop looking outside yourself for strength and look inwards, as you always should have done?_

_So I can look to you for help and protection, you mean?_ A question that normally would have been suspicious, accusatory, but Edgar kept his hand out. _So I could let you take care of me?_

Scriabin made a noise, something a little dismayed, a little upset, a little of an unwelcome realization. He could feel him trying to pull away, but he couldn't manage it, not completely.

_So I could trust you...?_

Another unhappy noise, that same nonsensical pulse of longing and fear, and a heavy foot trying to stomp it out of existence. He was struck by the thought of the inverse question, a mirror asking him if he wanted to take care of Scriabin in return, if he wanted to protect him, if he wanted to save him from the hell they were currently living in. If he wanted Scriabin to trust him in return.

Something in him pulsed, warmed, wanted to speak, wanted to be seen without second thoughts. He did want that.

He didn't want him back there, he wanted him out here. And he was struck with the thought that if he tried hard enough, he could just pull Scriabin out of him and make him real, sit him down right beside him and continue the dream from there. He wanted him, and he felt something from Scriabin in return, a hesitant kind of yearning, a furtive kind of gratitude, the faint hint of pleading that got through his efforts to snuff it all out.

"You look distracted," Johnny said, and Edgar blinked several times. Right. He reconnected back to his body, to the moment, to his present company, to himself. Johnny was looking at him, his hair lightly shifting in the breeze, and he had a smile on his face that he wasn't sure he'd seen before. It was something like fond, he thought, or satisfied. It gave him the feeling that he'd done something right, which Edgar always, always appreciated, and the warmth that came with that was a welcome balm for his tension.

And while Scriabin normally would have met any positive feelings he had for Johnny with anger, resentment, or, he hesitated to think it, jealousy, now all he could feel from Scriabin was that same tangled confusion, positive and negative things blurring together.

"Ah, sorry... I was just talking to Scriabin." Edgar smiled back at him, trying to sort out his own thoughts and emotions with little success. It was hard to think clearly, and it was hard to want to. He wanted to just let it go and stop thinking. That was the whole point of this dream in the first place, Scriabin had said.

"Yeah, I can tell when you do it." Johnny was still smiling at him. "He takes up a lot of your attention."

"Well..." Edgar wasn't quite sure how to feel about that, although he wasn't sure why embarrassed was an option, and Scriabin in return felt something between pleased and instinctually resentful.

Johnny smiled at him, and all at once his face exploded outwards in a shrieking maelstrom of fangs, teeth, claws, spikes, mouths, arms, and tentacles, all of which heading right for him. At nearly the same time, he felt something grab onto his shoulders and yank.

Edgar was on his back, everything around him was white, and he was screaming and screaming.

" _Fuck_." Scriabin panted heavily, crouched by his side, leaning heavily on one hand. "Damn it, it's really getting good at this. Fucking Christ."

Edgar wasn't really listening, although the screams had dwindled down into heavy, harsh gasps. Adrenaline set him on fire, set him outside his body, he felt sick, he felt too much and nothing at all, his heart was pounding in his head, his eyes hurt.

"Damn it..." Scriabin let out a shaky breath, ran a hand through his hair, then turned to him. He reached down to pull Edgar up to sitting, his hands on his shoulders. "Hey, hey, come on. Calm down. It's okay, it's gone. It can't get in here. Breathe."

Edgar was trying but it was very difficult. He could see it, over and over, he could see it, it kept replaying and kept getting worse, and he felt cold and lightheaded.

"No, no, come on. Come on, you can't do this right now." Scriabin gave him a small shake, then took hold of his face with both hands. There was something pleading in his voice, a touch of his own fear. "You can't do this right now, you can't take it. We can't take it. Come on. Look at me. _Look_ at me."

He wanted to stop, he did, he knew he was hyperventilating somewhere, he knew he shouldn't be doing this, but it didn't feel like his body was under his control. His thoughts were so scattered, it was difficult to remember what had caused it now, just that it was happening and it was going to happen forever, it was never going to stop.

"Come on, come _on_." Scriabin gave him another shake, a tinge of desperation through clenched teeth. " _Look_ at me, Edgar, _look_. I'm here, I'm _here_ with you. _Look_."

Edgar struggled, he tried to focus, he saw himself in his glasses, terrified, and tried to put the pieces together into one whole. Scriabin's face, his hands, his coat, his skin, his hair loose over his face. In all the black, it was impossible for the red yarn not to catch his eye. A long strand of it was woven into it by the side of his face, and then he saw another loop of it on the other side of his head. A small bow down near his shoulders. Three of them? He usually only had one. Why three?

"That's it." Scriabin let out a shaky breath. "That's it, calm down."

His thoughts latched onto the thought like a buoy in a churning sea. Three strands of yarn was strange, that was unusual, that had to mean something. That surely meant something, it always meant something between them. Was there only three? He could have another on the back of his head that he couldn't see. Did the number three itself have any particular significance? Or was it more like a sliding scale, going from one upwards and currently at three? What would that sliding scale indicate?

"There we go." Scriabin reached up and ran a hand through Edgar's hair, and Edgar swallowed and managed to take another deep breath. "There we go, just breathe."

Edgar touched a hand to his chest, and he could feel his heart still pounding. He felt cold all over now, shaky and weak but at least he could breathe, at least he didn't feel like he was going to die. It wasn't entirely gone, but it was passing.

"I feel sick," Edgar barely managed to get out. Scriabin moved his hands down to his shoulders to steady him.

"Unsurprising." Scriabin looked around them, his head moving quickly. "That was a lot closer than I would have liked."

"It was..." He knew, and that didn't help how sick he was at _all_. His eyes stung powerfully all of a sudden, his breath caught at the memory of old wounds, old damage, being alone, alone, _alone_ -

"No no, don't do that, don't do that." Scriabin turned his attention back to him, coming close. "Come on, I told you, you can't do that right now. You can't, you _can't_. I'm here, see? I'm right here, with you. I'm not going to let anything happen to you this time."

This time. Memories of what had happened, thoughts of what was coming, memories of what he'd had just moments ago before it had been ripped away from him, just like everything was. The desperate illusion of things being okay when they never, never were, the lie that there could be anything other than this unrelenting, unending misery and pain. His breath caught and he held it, he pressed his hands over his eyes and clenched his teeth to try and fight it.

Scriabin made a faint sound, stressed, frantic, helpless. He looped his arms around Edgar and yanked him close, hard enough to startle him.

"I've got you, you're safe, come on." Desperation laced its way through his voice in a way very unfamiliar to him. "I'm here, you're not alone. We're here, together, we're safe here. Come _on_ , Edgar." Scriabin said by his ear, his chin on his shoulder. "I need you to keep it together. If you wake up now you're going to have sleep paralysis for sure and that's the _last_ thing you need. You've got to stay with me."

"Stay with..." Something about that stuck in his head, something about it felt important. Everything felt fragile and disgusting, he didn't want to feel like this and shouldn't feel like this and he couldn't touch it to fix it, it cut him when he tried, and it was an easy downward spiral. He was an absolute, unforgivable excuse of a person, rightfully damned, not worth anything, not even worth existing-

"Edgar." Scriabin squeezed him, hard enough for it to hurt a little. "Please. Don't have a breakdown right now. I'm trying, I'm really trying but-" His voice broke, and Edgar's eyes widened. "I'm trying not to have one myself and-" He took a breath. "You having one is _really_ not going to help me with that."

"You're the one who told me I wasn't worth anything, that-"

"Shut up, shut _up_." Scriabin held him tighter, his voice strained. "God damn it. If you weren't worth anything I wouldn't be doing _this_ , you bastard."

Some faint, logical part of him wanted to be cautious, remember who Scriabin was and the damage he'd caused, the lies he'd told, the power he had to steal his life away from him and how often he'd done it. He couldn't trust him, after everything he'd done, the countless lies, he couldn't believe him, he couldn't.

But he was so tired, and so afraid.

With effort, Edgar raised his arms and wrapped them around Scriabin in return. He leaned heavily into him, let his weight give out entirely, and Scriabin kept him up. He could feel rips in his coat, string and something hard and sharp by his shoulderblades.

"We have to get through this." Scriabin's voice broke again, and Edgar had lost the border between his own fear and exhaustion and Scriabin's. "We have to." He took in a thick and shaky breath. "I know I'm not enough, but it's all we've got right now."

Guilt could always find its way to him, regardless of the circumstances. What he heard in Scriabin's voice brought the instinctual thought that he didn't want him to be hurting, the empathy that Scriabin so often said he didn't have.

Edgar had always found calm in extreme situations. It was a fact, and he told it to himself now. He just had to focus, he just had to breathe. If Scriabin was depending on him, then he had to be responsible. He had to take any fears or worries or feelings he had and put them away. Who he was or how he felt was inconsequential - all that mattered was what Scriabin currently needed him to do. 

And his breathing slowed.

Scriabin laughed, weakly. "Of course... of fucking course. It's a goddamn fucking see-saw. Fuck this. Fuck all of this." And he was laughing still, disbelieving, acquiescent.

They stayed like that, holding onto each other in unusual silence. Any significance the moment might have had was entirely lost on Edgar - all he was focusing on was keeping his breathing steady. Find the eye of the emotional storm and stand there, pick himself up out of an emotional swamp and hold himself out of his reach. All that mattered was maintaining control over himself in any way he could.

"Where are we...?" Edgar said, eventually, when he felt like his voice would be even and normal. It was close to it, but not quite there.

"You know where we are," Scriabin said, and then he huffed a short laugh. "Don't tell me you don't remember where we first met? I'm hurt!"

"Of course I remember, I could never forget," Edgar said without much thought, although he was a little surprised at the strong, pleased pulse of warmth he felt from Scriabin in response. "So, this is one of... your places?"

Again, Scriabin seemed pleased at the thought, although he couldn't imagine why. "You could call it that. It is mine, at least."

"Is it..." And Edgar tightened his grip on Scriabin's coat. "Is it safe...?"

And he expected the indignation he felt from him at casting aspersions, but there was a flicker of panic and pain underneath it he didn't expect, and didn't know what to make of. "Do you think I'd bring us somewhere that wasn't safe? That I'd be sitting here with you like this like a goddamn idiot while that thing creeps up on us like some kind of shitty cartoon? The audacity of your stupidity sometimes."

"If this place is safe, why aren't we always in here?" Edgar's voice shook more than he would have liked.

And he really wanted Scriabin to have a smart comeback to that, but he was quiet and that really sent his heart racing again. Edgar tightened his grip on him to try and still his shaking, his thoughts were heading down dark paths.

"It can get in here, can't it?" His eyes were stinging. "It can, can't it?"

"Not if it can't find us, it can't," Scriabin said, low and dark. "It's not going to find us."

Fear kept building, scenarios kept playing out in his head and he thought at first it was him who felt afraid, but then he wasn't sure. Scriabin still hadn't let him go, he could feel him shaking a little in return.

"And besides, if it does, I'll just find another place for us to hide," Scriabin said, too casual and light. "You'd think at some point it'd get tired of me constantly being one step ahead of it, but some things are just gluttons for punishment, I suppose. Another thing you're well familiar with, aren't you, my boy?"

The diminuitive was usually comfortingly annoying, but this time it didn't register at all. That under-looming terror was making it difficult for anything to get through.

"Can you really keep us hidden?"

"Of course. It's easy. One of the easiest things I can do." Scriabin snapped his fingers. He was still shaking, a little. That faint buzz of panic, rapid breathing, hadn't quite disappeared between them. He wasn't sure whose it was. "Not even a challenge really. So there's no reason for you to give yourself a panic attack over something that's not going to happen."

"You're not going to fight it, are you? If it comes in here?" His voice was shaking harder. He didn't want to make Scriabin angry by doubting him, he didn't want to do anything that'd threaten whatever fragile thing they were balanced on, but the words were in the air before he could do anything about it.

Scriabin tensed, strongly, a ripple of pain and fear going through him, powerful enough that it felt like his heart skipped a beat, and with a long breath, Scriabin fought it back down to nothing. He laughed, shakily, until his voice regained its strength. "What a waste of my time that would be! I told you, all I'd have to do is play another trivial trick on it to get the stupid thing off our backs. The last thing I want to do considering our circumstances is exert myself unnecessarily, and much less for such a non-problem as that second-rate H. R. Giger reject."

Edgar's arms were shaking around him, his eyes were shut tight. He tried to shut the images of it out of his mind, the sound of him screaming, the blood he'd seen that had stained his hands. "Please don't fight it again, I don't want you to get hurt." How much tighter could he hold him? "I don't want you to get hurt."

Scriabin's confusion was powerful enough to nearly drown out everything else at first, augmented by surprise lined with an unfamiliar pain. The flame of it died down to a quiet warmth, the individual lines of which were difficult to discern.

"I just told you I wasn't going to," Scriabin said, softly, his arms still around him. "Weren't you listening at all? If I had a nickel for every time you made me repeat myself unnecessarily, I could use the bag of them to beat some sense into you."

He wanted to believe him, he wanted to try and let the concept of _safe_ back into his mind. He couldn't, but he wanted to. Edgar forced himself to loosen his hold on him, to open his hands to let go of his coat. His fingers hurt and moved slowly, and when he looked down at them, he saw something sticking out of Scriabin's back. Two things, actually, right over his shoulderblades, and trying to identify them broke him out of his distressed thought loops. They looked like bone at first glance, although the ends of them were broken as if they'd been snapped. A few strands of red yarn were looped around them, loosely tied and dangling. It gave him a strange, disgusted, fearful feeling.

"What are these...?" Edgar said outloud, although he didn't intend to, and he reached for them without thinking. Scriabin went rigid, everything in him alert, danger screaming across their connection, and even before he said anything, Edgar shrank away.

"Don't touch them," Scriabin snarled, even though Edgar had already drawn his hand back, his heart pounding. "They're not yours."

"I... didn't say they were, I just... want to know what they are." 

"It doesn't fucking matter what they were. It's none of your fucking business." He was clearly angry, but more than that, he was hurting, and when Edgar felt concerned in response, it almost seemed to make it worse in a way.

Scriabin tensed again, Edgar braced himself and closed his eyes, but in the end it drained out of him with a long breath. 

"Just forget about it." He rarely ever heard him sound so resigned. "Just forget about it."

That hurt from him throbbed, then grew stronger as Scriabin tightened his grip on him until he was shaking. Edgar got the impression that he'd done something wrong, but he didn't know what it was. Like he always did when he got that feeling, he wanted to make things right somehow. He wanted to make that hurt stop.

"I'm sorry about... before." Maybe that was what Scriabin was so upset about. "Maybe I can make a dream you want this time."

"You can't make dreams, you're not a lucid dreamer. Not without my help." Scriabin sighed. "Besides, it might draw that thing's attention, and with how exhausted and useless you are, you'd just be a liability if I have to deal with it again."

"Can you make a dream then? I know you can do that."

"It'd draw too much attention." A moment, and he tried to toss his head, although he couldn't manage it with his chin still resting on Edgar's shoulder. "The fabulous works of my dreamcraft would be too amazing for anyone or anything to ignore. It'd be too beautiful for you to even look at directly, far more than you'd ever deserve. Not to mention the ease with which I'd create these impossible dreamscapes would sink you into self-loathing about how inadequate and powerless you are. We can't have you doing _that_ again right now, as I've said. We need to keep it together."

Pompous boasting at least distracted him and let the hurt fade. Nothing kept Scriabin's attention like talking about himself. Edgar rolled his eyes with an annoyed frown, which was both a sincere reaction and one he knew Scriabin would like.

"That's strange, I don't remember dreaming about anything like you're describing."

"Your memory isn't that great these days, Edgar, if you haven't noticed. Can you tell me any dreams you've had lately that aren't nightmares? You can't even remember your nightmares that clearly anymore, unless they involve that thing."

Edgar tried to dig into his memories, sure that Scriabin had to be wrong, but try as he might, he couldn't piece together anything coherent. Thousands of grains of sand that left an impression at a distance, but fell into nothing on closer inspection. He remembered fear, horror, confusion, exhaustion, loneliness, pain, but nothing specific to tie to any of those things.

"Why don't you tell me about one, then? Refresh my memory."

"Impossible. They were too extravagant for words."

"Really."

Finally, Scriabin loosed his arms around him to lean away. They could see each other again, although they were still close, and on one level it was a bit of a relief. Edgar still wasn't used to hugging someone, much less holding onto them so desperately. It didn't feel natural to him.

At the same time, he felt a little cold in a strange way.

"As always, you're _completely_ lacking in imagination." Now Scriabin could toss his head dismissively as he'd wanted, brushing his hair from his shoulder with a practiced flick of his hand. There were scratches on his face, he noticed now. "If I asked you to try and picture one, I wouldn't be surprised if your head would burst."

"Sounds like an excuse to me." Edgar crossed his arms with a faint smirk.

"It would." Scriabin leaned his head away from him, trying to look aloof to hide his annoyance, a perfect mirror to his own. It likewise gave Edgar that satisfied feeling at seeing it. "Anything you don't understand might as well not exist to you."

"I remember you saying earlier that you tried to create dreams to make me feel better. Maybe you can try describing one of those. If I don't have any imagination, then surely I wouldn't enjoy all these amazing landscapes you're talking about, and you'd know that. You must have tried something else to try and calm me down, right?"

Scriabin looked away, frowning with his arms crossed, now distinctly uncomfortable. 

"I know you, and I know you wouldn't make anything to make me feel better unless it made _you_ feel better, too." And a hint of a smile tugged at his lips. "As you've said to me... you're not that altruistic."

"Hmph." A little indignant huff, just the kind he expected, and harmless. "I'm not going to set myself on fire to keep you warm, if that's what you mean. Not unless you force me to, if you're thinking about getting smart with me and bringing up the dream I _just_ rescued you from. My decision to play my part there was beneficial to _me_ as well."

"So what kind of dream did you make?" Edgar was genuinely curious now, which made his smirk fade away. "What did you think would make us _both_ happy?"

Scriabin kept looking away, and he twitched for a second. "'Happy' is a strong word. What would be the point in telling you? It's not like you'd remember it anyway."

"What else are we going to do here?" Edgar held out his arms. "There's literally nothing here except us. Do you want to make a TV instead?"

"And have to come up with an entire programming schedule to keep you entertained? Have I not mentioned I'm fucking exhausted?"

"You said _I_ was exhausted."

"You _are_ exhausted."

"If your dreams are as perfect as you say, then what do you have to hide? You can even rub in my face that I was stupid enough to reject something so wonderful. Are you really going to pass that up? That's not like you."

Scriabin's mouth twisted and he looked more uncomfortable than ever. The idea of him being embarrassed about something was too impossible to consider for more than a few seconds - it couldn't be that. As curious as Edgar was to see it, he was even more curious now to know why Scriabin wanted to keep it to himself.

For all that Scriabin was an expert at manipulating him into whatever choices he wanted, Edgar had a sense for what buttons to push himself. Scriabin shook his head with a strained noise, visibly wrestling with the idea, before he made a frustrated grunt. "You won't like it." With the air of an unappreciated artist as he scooted away a little to get some space between them. "You never do."

"It's not... us as children, is it...?"

"No, that well's been poisoned." Scriabin raised his hands in front of him, his palms up like he was going to hold something. "After what happened."

Edgar could see it, briefly, glimpses of the dark halls of bone, the light from his hands, the monsters, the creatures coming out from the darkness, that thing and he was so small, so small and so defenseless-

"Edgar." Scriabin had his hand on his shoulder, and he gave him a firm shake. Edgar blinked and focused his eyes again. "Stop it. You can't do that right now."

He took a deep breath. "Right."

"Alright." Scriabin let go of his shoulder to hold both hands in front of him again. "You shouldn't be trying to create anything, but that doesn't mean I can't. Albeit on a small scale."

Edgar watched as the skin on the palm of Scriabin's hand moved, like something was underneath it, and then a dot of red appeared. It all happened in a few seconds, too quickly for him to react. A strand of red yarn came up and out through his skin, looped in and around itself into a vaguely human shape, and then in the space of one blink it was gone. Instead, a small, translucent version of Edgar stood on Scriabin's palm.

Edgar was amazed at first, then on further thought, it led backwards into horror. "Wait, you made that out of...?"

"There's more of that in me than I'd like." There was a definite growl at the edge of those words.

"Could you always do this?" If he couldn't see the yarn, he could pretend it wasn't involved, and that let him go back to being genuinely astonished. A miniature Scriabin appeared on his other hand to match its counterpart, its details similarly lost in such a tiny form. He'd never seen anything like this.

"Probably." Scriabin lowered his hands down to the white between them, setting the little things down on nothing. More tiny props appeared beside them, flashes of loops of red before they became something else. A couch, a television, a bookcase...

"Oh... it's the apartment," Edgar said to himself. He couldn't look away.

"This'll be clearer with visual aids." Scriabin sounded distracted. The holo versions of the two of them stood there, unmoving, apparently waiting for direction. "Since you seem to not be paying very close attention to my words tonight."

Edgar couldn't help it - he reached a hand out to the hologram of himself. His fingers brushed its head, it felt a bit fibrous and it fuzzed like static when he touched it, then Scriabin slapped his hand away. "Ow!"

"Don't touch them, you idiot, this takes enough focus as it is." Scriabin shook his head at him. "If you'd think about anyone but yourself for two seconds..."

Edgar rubbed his hand, still unable to take his eyes off the thing. It had unfuzzed almost immediately, although there was still something a little blurry about it. It had the same kind of faint glowing halo around it like something on TV, now that he looked. That made sense to him, although he couldn't explain why.

Scriabin reached down, and he set a finger lightly on the holo-Scriabin's head.

"Wait, why can _you_ touch them then-"

"Shut _up_ , Edgar, for Christ's sake."

The tiny Scriabin fuzzed in the same way, but Scriabin only touched it for a moment. He flicked his wrist, giving it a little nudge, and then both the holograms began moving.

The holo-Scriabin came over to the holo-Edgar, held out its hand, and moved its head like it was speaking. It didn't make any sound though, which he supposed made sense. The two things talked for some period of time, the holo-Scriabin throwing out all those dramatic little gestures that Edgar had become familiar with, although he found his attention mostly drawn to the replica of himself. Did he really look like that? Did he adjust his glasses like that, toss his head in that way, tap his foot and look so plainly exasperated?

"I am not that dramatic," Edgar said, mostly to himself, and he could practically hear Scriabin roll his eyes.

"Look at yourself in a mirror sometime."

"You're not exaggerating _your_ movements."

"Because all of _my_ movements are perfect. It's not my fault you're an amateur when it comes to emoting."

The holo-Scriabin turned away, crossing its tiny arms, its nose in the air in obvious affront. The holo-Edgar tried to get it to turn back around, but it wasn't willing. Finally, the holo-Edgar rubbed its arm and looked down, clearly apologetic, and then the holo-Scriabin turned back around to it again. They talked a little longer, then went over to the miniature couch and sat down beside one another, apparently settling down to watch TV.

Edgar's brow furrowed, waiting for the rest of the little skit to play out, but the two things seemed content where they were. The holo-Scriabin had its arms thrown across the back of the couch, taking up as much space as possible, while the holo-Edgar was much more contained, its hands on its lap.

"I don't understand," Edgar said eventually, shaking his head. "This is just a normal day for us."

He expected Scriabin to say something, explain himself, call him any variety of names for not understanding, but he was quiet. There was something tense in the air, maybe from the concentration required to maintain the little illusions, but he wasn't sure. Edgar thought about looking up to see Scriabin's face for some kind of clue, but he couldn't take his eyes off the little things. If he looked away, he might miss the actual point of it.

The holo-Edgar leaned back against the couch, its head resting on the holo-Scriabin's arm across the back of it, both of them still intent on the TV. What was it? What was it? What here was meant to put him at ease? To put them _both_ at ease?

"Is it us getting along...?" Edgar ventured. "I mean, after the argument we clearly had."

Still, Scriabin didn't say anything. That was worrying. His silence was almost always calculated, since he hated it so much.

Edgar's dream had been meant to soothe him personally... Scriabin created this scenario for what had to be the same reason. What about it was soothing to him? What about it was different...?

The holo-Scriabin scratched its head. 

It hit him like a lightning bolt.

"This is..." Edgar took in a breath, and he looked up at Scriabin to find him staring intently down at the holograms, just as he had been. "This is meant to be real life, isn't it? This is you... this is us in real life. Both of us."

"Took you long enough," Scriabin mumbled.

Edgar looked back down at the two holograms, still sitting so close beside each other. He could feel, from Scriabin, so much longing that it almost took his breath away.

_You won't accept what I offer because it doesn't come from you. I'm not enough. You won't like it. You never do. It doesn't work. Your fun accessory to your dazzling, scintillating life. Your vision of a 'fixed' reality isn't the same as mine._

"Is this... is this all it is...?" Edgar found himself shivering. "Just us being... together?"

"That's right, children," Scriabin said, his voice shaking with agonized bitterness. "In your dreams you can do _any_ thing."

"Scriabin..."

"Don't bother. I know how you feel, it's just what I predicted, and I don't care, and it doesn't matter." Scriabin refused to look up at him, staring stone faced at the little illusions.

Edgar wanted words, he felt like there SHOULD be words for this, the pain overwhelming deserved some kind of voice. He couldn't tell at all which one of them it was coming from, or if they were echoing it back to each other and just increasing the volume. He looked back down to the holograms, heavy with guilt. He _should_ know how to fix this, shouldn't he? Wasn't this his responsibility?

... _Was_ it his responsibility?

He watched as the tiny holo-Edgar appeared to yawn, then settled its head against the holo-Scriabin's shoulder. Its counterpart stayed where it was, didn't turn its head to look.

"How much of me can you control in a dream?" Edgar tried to fight off increasing dread at watching his hologram apparently drift off to sleep. That was dangerous, how could it do that?

"Haven't we shared enough dreams together for you to know?" Scriabin said, emotionless.

Edgar thought back, although he was sure he wasn't going to like what he'd find. Scriabin could twist the entire world _around_ him to try and _make_ Edgar take a certain course or say a certain thing, but he couldn't _directly_ control him in a dream.

At least... he didn't think he could.

"This is the real me? Not a fake one, like Nny?"

" _Two_ of you? God forbid. I can barely stand just one of you." Although he got the impression that the suggestion had startled Scriabin a little. Had it never occurred to him...?

"Then I don't... seem frightened." Edgar tilted his head a little at the two holograms. It didn't seem right that his current unease wasn't transferring to his replica. "I seem okay with it."

"You are, to a point," Scriabin said. The hologram version of him moved, raising one hand to reach for holo-Edgar's face, and the real Scriabin flicked one finger sharply. "No, we're not doing _that_."

"What?"

It wasn't directed at him, apparently. The holo-Scriabin stopped in its course, instead shrugging with a tilt of its head in that familiar dismissive way that Edgar disliked. Sure enough, the holo-Edgar sat up properly, and in seconds the two of them were in another silent argument. He could imagine it was about what they were watching, although with the two of them, who knew? They could make an argument out of nothing at all.

"This... doesn't seem so bad." Something felt strange about saying that. "Everything's fixed, I assume? We're not a lock anymore?" A pause, and his stomach tensed. "Where's Nny?"

Scriabin as quiet for a time, just watching the two holograms bicker in silence on the couch. Holo-Edgar's emotions were still obvious... Edgar didn't like that at all. The idea that someone could just _see_ what he was feeling... he hated it, and he wasn't sure why.

"If you're so curious, let's find out, shall we?" Scriabin said, his voice tight. "Like tonight hasn't been filled with enough pointless bullshit already." 

Scriabin waved a hand. Another burst of red yarn, and a third little figure joined the other two. Johnny, in the same simple miniature.

"You always find some way to ruin everything, you know that?"

Holo-Johnny pulled a tiny knife from its boot. Edgar already knew where this was going, and he wanted to reach out and do something to stop it, but it felt pointless.

Holo-Johnny knocked on an invisible door, holo-Edgar let it in, they took a few steps back in apparent conversation. Holo-Scriabin got up from the couch, clearly upset, but it wasn't touching what passed for the floor anymore. It was hovering slightly, its hair and coat floating, growing more and more translucent. A specter of a hologram, even more insubstantial than before. It came over to holo-Edgar, hovered around its shoulders with clear anxiety. 

As he knew it would, holo-Johnny stabbed holo-Edgar in the stomach. There was a brief flicker of yarn falling apart into nothing, and then it was gone. They both were gone.

"You always wake up when you die," Scriabin said, in that quiet, emotionless voice.

Everything reversed, like pressing rewind on a VCR, back to the Edgar and Scriabin holograms sitting on the couch together, arguing about nothing. Holo-Johnny appeared again, this time from the direction of the bedroom... it must have gotten in through the window. Holo-Johnny, just as in real life, didn't seem to understand why this would be alarming, although holo-Edgar nearly fell off the couch. Holo-Scriabin, unhappy again, tried to push Johnny away... and passed right through it, like a ghost.

Holo-Johnny helped holo-Edgar to its feet, they were talking again in silence, while holo-Scriabin tried desperately to get between them and get the knife out of its hand. Again, the knife sank into collapsing yarn, and the play ended.

"You have no imagination." With clear bitterness now. Again the figures rewound, and when they played again, it was in fast forward. Each time, it followed the same basic pattern. Johnny would appear, Scriabin would try to intervene, Edgar would get killed, they'd disappear. Over and over and over, with slight permutations.

"You get the idea." Scriabin rewound them back to the couch again, arguing about nothing, and left them there.

"Why does that keep happening...?" Edgar felt at once hollow and sick, terribly guilty and he couldn't put a name to why.

"You tell me." He refused to look up from the holograms. " _I'm_ not the one who adds him to these little scenes. Clearly you want him there for some self-destructive reason or another. God knows you have enough of them. Amazing that one of the bedrocks of your life is that you want it to end."

"I don't... I don't want _this_."

"And one of the other bedrocks is constant denial. If you don't want him there, then why is he _there_ , Edgar?"

Edgar stared at the two holograms on the couch, their argument now pretty heated. They turned away from each other, their arms crossed like sulky children. It was ridiculous, in its own way, which made the faint warm feeling at the sight all the more perplexing.

"If all I want to do is torture myself, why did I make the last dream we were in?" Edgar looked up at him, but Scriabin refused to look away from the miniature versions of themselves. "You said I made that one, _that's_ what I want, not... not this. I wanted this, all this, to stop." 

Holo-Edgar was again trying to appeal to holo-Scriabin, who kept looking away, although Edgar could sense, somewhere, that it wasn't genuine. No doubt it just wanted the holo-Edgar to grovel a little longer to feed its ego.

"Just like you do," Edgar said, softly. "We just try to do it in different ways." And his voice fell further, something in him felt so heavy. "It doesn't seem to work though, does it?"

He reached out to try and get some sense of how Scriabin was feeling. He got that same heaviness, something hard to name, and that undercurrent of anger and frustration that he knew well. 

"It's not my fault," Scriabin said, without the strength he would have expected. "You're the one who keeps ruining it, not me."

"Why am I even able to? Didn't you make these dreams?"

He caught a flash of indignation and wounded pride. "Are you implying I don't have _control_?" 

That was about as obvious as a warning could get. "I'm not saying that. I'm just wondering why we're dwelling on this one scenario I keep ruining, instead of all the other ones you've come up with. You must have a lot of them, right? I assume you tried everything to make us feel better. Why don't we look at one of those?"

Scriabin frowned, clearly torn between pressing Edgar on his doubt or accepting the compliment. 

"Don't you have one with me bowing at your feet? Declaring you the King of Always Being Right, swearing to do everything you tell me to do? You must have at least one like that, and I _know_ seeing that will make you feel better."

"I don't need you telling me what will or won't make me feel better." Although he could feel Scriabin's resolve weakening. "...I admit, watching you wreck one of my works of art over and over again with your pathetic issues hasn't been exactly appealing."

_He thinks the two of us together is a work of art...?_

"If you don't want to do one of your old ones, maybe we could come up with a new one together. That way we'd be sure to both be soothed, right?"

And Scriabin stiffened at that, he could feel his pricked pride clearly. "You? Mr. Endless White Void For a Subconscious? What possible dreams could you even come up with? How many dreams have you had where only one thing happens, forever? Don't answer that, I already know. You barely dreamt at all until you met Nny. What was the point? You had nothing in your life to dream about, just that boring nothingness we're sitting in right now. It was a relief to you even, to not have to engage your mind in something interesting even in sleep."

"You know, I remember dreaming at least once about that pirate cat book. And, what was it... The Dracularions?"

"Rise of the Dracularions," Scriabin said. "God, what a shitty book that was."

"I remember dreaming about that at least once. Mostly because you were mad that I did. You were in that one too if I remember right."

"You're getting off-topic." Scriabin finally looked up to point at him.

"I'm poking holes in what you're saying." Edgar pointed back at him, and Scriabin smacked his hand away. He drew it back to his chest with a frown.

"If anything, it only proves my point. All the dreams you come up with are garbage. What would be the point in collaborating with you on one? You'd just drag the entire thing down, if you wouldn't ruin it completely, like you ruin everything you touch."

"Then are you going to show me a different one or not? You said you have control, so that means there's one I didn't ruin. If you don't want to make one together, then at least show me that one."

"I don't know why I should do anything for you at the moment." Scriabin crossed his arms, looking away. "Who are you to demand me to entertain you after you wrecked your own self-pity party earlier?"

"What, would you rather sit here and stare into space? You already made those... things." Edgar gestured down at the holograms of themselves. Their argument had come and gone, as they usually did, and the two of them were watching TV again, settled beside each other. "You might as well use them. Otherwise you expended the energy to make them for nothing, and I know you don't like doing that."

"What do you know," Scriabin said, still looking away, although he could feel him just on the edge of giving in.

"It'd entertain you too, you know. You could prove to me that I'm a fool for rejecting your perfect vision. You have to want that."

Scriabin huffed, and he could feel that tentative step over the line. "...You wouldn't be able to see the whole of its beauty. I can't create full vistas under these conditions. It'd just be the general plot of the thing."

Almost, almost. "That's all you'd need to prove your point, isn't it? If the things you make are so amazing."

"I know what you're doing." Although he couldn't sense any true anger from him. "You're not clever."

"I'm curious."

"As well you should be. Someone like you couldn't even begin to imagine it."

"Show it to me."

"Don't tell me what to do." But Scriabin turned back to face him again, his arms uncrossed. "I wonder if you'd even understand what I'd show you."

"There's only one way to find out."

"I'd have to pick one simple enough for even you to understand..." He had a hand to his chin now, thoughtful in spite of his haughty tone. "I've made so many of them, after all, more than you could ever imagine. A garden of unearthly delights for you to ignore and defile." And his voice dropped as he spoke to himself. "That'd make me God rather than the snake. Hmm."

"Well, pick one then. Unless you want to make a new one?"

"I already said I'm tired, I'm not going to put in the work to make some new play for you to watch. You're just going to have to be satisfied with the shocking concept of _narrative_ for this one."

Edgar frowned a little. "Narrative? Is that what you've been talking up this entire time?"

"I know, it's a thing you're entirely unfamiliar with. You'd think with all the books we've read that you'd understand at least a little about emotional engagement. Although that requires you to have emotions."

"You're stalling."

"This scenario is a little more complicated than the previous." Scriabin sounded strained, and Edgar blinked. He expected an insult - that response sounded candid. "Maintaining these things takes effort, you know, not that you'd ever think about anyone but yourself."

Edgar ignored the bait. "I still don't know how you're doing this... they look so real."

He could feel a little pulse of warmth from Scriabin, as tangled as it was with him trying to pull it back. He loved compliments, he could never refuse one. "Yes, I know I'm amazing."

Edgar got the faint impression that Scriabin didn't, somewhere, although he was sure he imagined it. It disappeared almost as soon as it registered.

"Try and follow along." Scriabin's voice was tight. "I'm not going to be able to hold your hand through this one, I have to focus."

Edgar nodded.

Scriabin moved his hands, like he was drawing something out of the nothing between them. They were just brief glimpses of red yarn loops, tangles only for seconds before they changed to perfect replicas. A staircase, tables and bureaus, chairs covered in plastic, several pictures of Jesus in various sizes set on a small table by the stairs.

He knew this place, and he shuddered for a second and immediately felt guilty for it. He tried to analyze what it was he felt, but he couldn't. It didn't point positive or negative, or at least not consistently in either direction.

"Granma's house," Edgar mumbled. Scriabin said nothing.

As new surroundings rose up, the old ones disappeared, leaving the little versions of themselves to reorient themselves without warning. Holo-Scriabin got over it quickly, putting its hands in its pockets as it looked around at this new place with mild interest. Holo-Edgar, however, went from confused to upset, and it began searching under, over, and through all the furniture. It was clearly looking for something.

If Edgar was trying to do something, then of course Scriabin would refuse to be helpful. His tiny replica didn't help Edgar's at all, just following along behind it. Every now and then its head moved just a little, and he could just imagine the smug comment it must have been making. At times, Holo-Edgar did turn and look irritated at it, but for the most part it seemed intent on its task. As whatever it was looking for refused to appear, it got more and more desperate, searching the same places over and over like it had somehow missed something.

After going through a cabinet for at least the fifth time, holo-Edgar spun and faced holo-Scriabin, clearly shouting despite the silence. Holo-Scriabin seemed a bit taken aback at the sudden outburst, which ended with holo-Edgar burying its head in its hands, shivering. After a moment, with an exaggerated sigh, holo-Scriabin reached out and put its hands on its shoulders. His tiny self jolted in surprise, but all holo-Scriabin did was say something to it. After a moment, holo-Edgar nodded, and the two of them began to search together.

Edgar still had no idea what they were looking for, but the urgency with which they did so indicated that it was important. His hologram was clearly distressed the longer it went without finding it, and while Edgar still disliked seeing emotion so clearly in himself, he felt a sympathetic sort of anxiety. He wanted the little things to find whatever it was they were looking for.

The two of them eventually scaled the staircase, which sank and disappeared into the nothing below them as they went upwards. They headed for Edgar's bedroom, marked more by the furniture than any kind of walls or floor or door, where they again began looking desperately below, over, and through things.

"Is... she here?" Edgar said, quietly. The little scene paused in place, and Edgar looked up. Scriabin didn't take his eyes off his work, but he did move one outstretched hand back and forth in a "sort of" gesture. Edgar gave him a look.

"Contradictory things can be true at the same time," Scriabin said, a bit out of breath. "Dream logic. Remember."

"So she's here, but not here."

Somehow, that didn't seem that unfamiliar to him. Again he felt something he wasn't sure how to classify, something that didn't fit easily into any one category, which in itself made him feel guilty. Whatever it was he was feeling, it was wrong. That feeling at least he knew quite well.

Their tiny counterparts went back to searching the room without any apparent success. Then, without warning, holo-Edgar froze. Tension rippled through it for a second, then it collapsed to the non-floor.

Scriabin's tiny echo immediately knelt by its side, shook its shoulder in concern. Holo-Edgar didn't move, he got the impression it _couldn't_ move, and eventually holo-Scriabin hooked its hands under it and dragged it over to the bed. It propped it up against the invisible wall, gestured at it, made demands of it from its body language which was almost cute in a way, but the holo-Edgar didn't move. Frozen, or paralyzed, Edgar wasn't sure, but it had to be one of the two, he was sure of it. It looked terrified and confused, and Edgar could imagine how badly it'd want to move as directed, and how awful it'd feel at the inability to do so. 

Holo-Scriabin paced back and forth, its hands in its hair. It'd glance over at Edgar's hologram every now and then, and he wasn't sure if it was out of worry or because his replica could still speak, even if it couldn't move. Was it asking the holo-Scriabin to do something? Begging it for help? His stomach felt tight.

In an apparent snap decision, the holo-Scriabin came back over to the bed, sat down beside its counterpart, and took holo-Edgar's hand in its own. It began rubbing it, like it was trying to warm it, then moved up to rub its upper arm, pat its cheek, and rub down its other arm as well. It even went down to its legs, which made Edgar uncomfortable for some reason he couldn't quite identify.

Slowly, with visible effort, the little version of himself began to move again, small movements building steadily until it could press a hand to its head. It shook itself out a little like a wet dog while holo-Scriabin wagged a finger at it in some kind of admonishment, although it was smiling in apparent relief.

The two things talked in silence for a little while, then holo-Edgar reached out and touched holo-Scriabin's arm. It tensed, fluffing a little like a cat, then turned away with its nose in the air, its arms crossed. Again Edgar got the impression that there wasn't any sincerity to it, that it was a refusal for appearances despite the lack of an audience. Holo-Edgar said something again, giving holo-Scriabin a pleading look, although he couldn't think of what it'd be asking for.

With a dramatic, visible sigh, holo-Scriabin turned back to its counterpart, and the two of them wrapped their arms around each other. Then they just... stayed like that.

The other props in the room disappeared as Scriabin let out a relieved breath, leaving just the two holograms on the bed, holding each other. Edgar's brow furrowed as he kept staring at them, searching for an explanation. This had to be symbolic, he was sure, and he had an idea of what concept Scriabin would have him seeking, particularly in this place, but he didn't like it.

"There was a lot of touching in this." Edgar couldn't keep himself from sounding dubious.

"Taking after our psychotic friend, are we?" Scriabin shook his head. "It's something you want, whether or not you'll admit it."

"You're saying I _want_ to... do something like this?" _With you?_

"What you _want_ is to be touched." Scriabin pointed at him, this time not as an accusation, just an underline to his point. "You want to be held. You, my boy, are touch starved."

"That's not a real thing."

"You know as well as I do that it's a real thing." Scriabin put his hands on his hips. "What, do you think a bunch of horny and/or lonely researchers got together and decided to make hugs a medical requirement for their own benefit? At least they'd be more honest about their desires than _you_."

"Touch starvation doesn't make sense." Now he felt distinctly uncomfortable. The content look on his miniature self wasn't helping. "It's not like touching other people is necessary to survive."

"It's necessary to not go _crazy_. It makes perfect sense, you just don't want to accept it because then you'd have to admit something's wrong with you. That maybe living the vast majority of your life completely alone and isolated from other human beings _maybe_ did some damage to your brain. And we can't have _that_ , can we? No, Edgar Vargas is _completely_ normal."

"Why would I want to be _held_?" Edgar wasn't exactly talking to him, staring instead at their tiny shadows. Holo-Edgar had its head on holo-Scriabin's shoulder. "It doesn't accomplish anything. There's no point to it."

"Are you not listening?"

"There's no reason to want to be held." Edgar kept staring, kept staring at his little self. Something clicked on in him, like a record player's needle coming down. "You don't _need_ to be held..."

"You _want_ to be held," Scriabin finished. "Yes, I remember her saying that too, you know. That doesn't make it _true_."

"It's an important distinction."

"Is it?"

Edgar kept staring, and there was some kind of anger from a dark hidden place that he didn't want. Guilt, ever present, tried to smother it back down. The little illusions were just playing their roles. This wasn't their fault.

"Physical contact actually does wonders for you, I've found. You're not always receptive to it initially, but whenever you give in to it..." He gestured down at the two of them. "Just look at your dumb little face. You never know what's good for you. I have to drag you kicking and screaming into everything."

The passing insult was grounding somehow. Edgar tilted his head to try and get a better look at them. "You know... you don't look exactly unhappy with it either."

_If I'm touch-starved, doesn't that mean that you...?_

He caught a flash of that indignance again, the frantic covering up of something else, as Scriabin twitched.

"There's actually a great irony here, one that I'd say is almost emblematic of your entire life. It's amazing, the circles you go in to deprive yourself of even the smallest modicum of happiness." Changing the subject, as always, and Edgar gave him a look that he ignored. "There are things you so desperately want, and you go to such extreme lengths to ensure those things will never happen."

"Do I?" Edgar said, his tone completely level.

"Let's not forget the center of all of this, the pathetic dying star you orbit around." Scriabin drew his hand up and the tiny Johnny appeared again, frozen in place. Holo-Edgar and holo-Scriabin didn't seem to notice. "You hunger for touch, you desperately want someone to hold you and tell you things will be okay, and yet, the man you've centered all your misguided affection and hopes on absolutely _despises_ physical contact of any sort. This is what you want, someone who'll always deny you what you need. He's made you afraid of it, even. One of the many things about yourself he's made you afraid of as he tempers you into what he wants you to be." He shook his head. "I don't even have to make you miserable, you do it well enough by yourself. If I didn't hate you so much, I'd pity you."

"I don't _want_ Nny to be like this." Edgar felt like something should happen now that three illusions were together again, something bad, something awful, something he didn't want, didn't _want_. "This version of him, it's the real one, isn't it? It's not the one from the dream earlier? The one who won't kill me?" _Us?_

Scriabin frowned, but didn't say anything.

"You saw him, you were in that dream with me, you _knew_ what I..." Edgar looked down at the tiny Johnny, who was staring off into the distance, disconnected from everything. He felt guilty, although he didn't know why. He pressed a hand to his forehead, his voice shaking in spite of his efforts. "You know what I've been trying to do all along, what I've tried to believe in, what I even made happen just a second ago... I don't _want_ him to hurt me, I don't want him to..." And another twinge of guilt made him turn his thoughts away from himself. "I don't want him to be hurting all the time, I don't want him hurting other people, I just- I want him to be happy, I want to be happy and I want _you_ to be happy-"

And he saw, and felt, Scriabin jerk a bit at that. A sine wave sent out along their connection, shock and confusion that faded into something muddled. 

"And I was trying, I was _trying_ to fix it, even just in here where- where only God should be able to judge me, even here I was trying to fix it and just make him _stop_ -"

"If you were trying then you would have done it. Everything here is under your control-"

"I _did_ do it!" Edgar snapped, louder than he intended, and Scriabin started. "I _did_ do it earlier, and you bitched at me about that, like you do about everything! You're _never_ happy, and _he's_ never happy, and I try and even _here_ I can't do it right, I can't do anything right and I'm trying to do something good and he won't- if it's not him, then it's something else ruining it, and-"

Frustration, anger built quickly and without thinking Edgar grabbed the tiny Johnny. It felt strange in his hand, fuzzing where he touched it, thin and fibrous even though it still looked just like him. He didn't like touching it, his hand was shaking but he couldn't make himself let it go.

Scriabin took in a strained breath as he went tense. "Edgar- god damn it, what did I tell you about touching them-"

"I don't want to be afraid of him! I don't want him to hurt me, the whole _point_ of that dream was that I _wasn't_ afraid of him, _that's_ what I want and it's just- everything I've tried, everything I've done, every prayer I've made and we're here and we're stuck and we're going to die and even when- even when I _pretend_ he's not insane, even when I _pretend_ -"

Holo-Johnny looked up at him, its hands resting on top of his thumb, and it had that wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare that so often made Edgar's heart hurt with frustration and something else he couldn't identify. It didn't understand, it'd never understand, and he just couldn't accept that. Something in him refused, in spite of it all.

"I know I can't fix it, I know it can't be fixed," or did he? Still it refused, "I know it's not something you can just _fix_ but I just want him to stop hurting me, he doesn't have to be sane, he doesn't have to be happy, he doesn't have to be anything as long as he stops hurting me, I just want him to stop hurting me." Edgar's hand was shaking harder, something was stinging his eyes and he wasn't sure who he was directing his words towards. It felt like they could apply to everything in his life, which made his eyes really hurt and everything felt tense.

"I just want-"

And a muscle in his arm, his hand, contracted too powerfully, and he squeezed the tiny hologram and it burst in his hand into a tangle of red yarn. It took a second for it to register, then Edgar yelped and shook his hand frantically to try and get it off. Horror at what he'd done blended perfectly with the sensation of it, knowing he did something wrong-

Scriabin grabbed his wrist with one hand and his shoulder with the other to give him a rough shake. Edgar gasped, it stuck in his throat a little. "Edgar! Calm down! Stay still for god's sake."

His heart was pounding and he watched, or watched himself watching, as Scriabin tightened his grip painfully on his wrist and untangled the strands. A few sharp tugs pulled them apart, although it felt like it burned against his skin, then it fell down to the white between them, harmless if upsetting still to look at.

"Christ, what is wrong with you," Scriabin grumbled to himself. "I don't know how you keep finding new ways to freak the fuck out over nothing. Keeping you from hurting yourself is goddamn Sisyphean."

"I didn't mean to..." Edgar thought of the little thing's face when he held it, how it had stared up at him, unaware of what he was going to do. He felt sick with it. "I didn't mean to hurt it, I..."

"You can't _hurt_ them," Scriabin said, with distaste, as he shoved Edgar's hand back at him. "They're not real."

"But..." It made sense - nothing here was real, it was a dream, although he got the sense that wasn't what Scriabin meant. 

"They're not _real_ , Edgar. I made them, you saw me make them. You know they're not real." Scriabin reached out and snatched the tiny replica of himself out of holo-Edgar's arms, much to its dismay. "They're just little props I'm using to illustrate my point, since it's the most efficient way to do so. They're no more real than a drawing, or a paragraph, or-"

_Or your toy?_ He wanted to take that thought back as soon as it came to him, but it didn't seem like Scriabin heard him.

"It's just a symbol, just a tool, just something made for a single purpose, and if it strays from that purpose, then that just means something's _wrong_ with it." Scriabin shook his tiny self, gesturing with his other hand. His teeth were bared. "They don't have feelings of their own, they don't have thoughts or emotions, they reflect whatever I give them, they aren't _real_."

"That's..." Edgar stared at the little holo-Scriabin, which had set its hands against its larger counterpart's thumb and was pushing. "That's- that's not true, it's trying to get free. It doesn't want you holding it, doesn't that show that it has some element of free will?"

"It takes more than _that_ to be real to you." Scriabin was staring directly at him, and he could feel the fire in him burning dangerously high. His hand was shaking harder, Edgar could sense it coming and he felt helpless.

"Don't hurt it, it didn't do anything-"

"They can't feel pain! They can't feel anything! It doesn't fucking matter what I do to it! It can _look_ real, it can be a perfect little reflection of reality, it can act and move and behave like it has emotions, like it has _feelings_ ," with a sneer, "but it doesn't have any real ones, they're from somewhere else, they're from _me_ , it's all borrowed from _me_ , it's not _real_ , it's just a reflection, it's just an imitation, and it's not real to you, it'll _never_ be real to you-!"

And his fist tightened and his own replica burst into string. That stab of horror went through Edgar, he held out his hands towards him like somehow that would undo it. "No!"

Scriabin was panting, he stared down at the tangle of red string around his hand. He could feel it across their connection, inescapable, louder and louder. "It's just yarn, Edgar! Look at it! Why are you pretending you care?"

"It's-" And Edgar's brow furrowed as he looked down. His tiny self was looking up at the string around Scriabin's hand, and when Scriabin shook it off to the nothing between them, holo-Edgar knelt down by the little pile of it. It pressed its hands to its head, shaking. "Look at it! Look at it, it- it knows what you did, it understands, it wants its Scriabin back-" 

"It doesn't want anything!" Scriabin was shaking with fury now. "They can't want anything, they're not capable of it!"

"Then why are you making it do that!" Edgar pointed at his hologram, which was now trying to push the yarn together back into a shape. "Why are you making me miss you? It wants you- it wants the little you-"

"It doesn't fucking want anything!" Scriabin shouted, and his voice cracked. "All you're doing is projecting depth onto it that doesn't exist! You're expending energy, emotional energy, on nothing more than an illusion, nothing more than a shadow cast by something bigger, an echo, a reflection, something that doesn't exist without a _real_ source-"

"Scriabin, calm down!" Edgar reached out to set his hands on his shoulders, but Scriabin jerked away from him. "You're going to hyperventilate-"

"What the fuck do you care!" Scriabin yelled at him. "All you ever do is _pretend_ , and you even do a shitty job of that!"

"Scriabin, it's not like that, you know it's not like that-"

"You fucking put me back, you made me your little fucking voice again, that's how you see me! That's how you always see me! That's all I'll ever be to you!" Scriabin gasped for breath, struggling to keep talking and breathe at the same time. It was pouring out of him, ragged and raw as he trembled with rage. "All your fucking words, and all your fucking lies, you said that was what you wanted! That dream was what you wanted, it was supposed to make you happy, you made it to make yourself happy and where did you put me? What did you fucking do to me?"

"I didn't-"

"All you fucking care about is yourself, you didn't even think about it until _I_ told you you were fucking stabbing me, and you have the fucking audacity to be concerned about a fucking toy version of me-!" And he shuddered with a pulse of frustration and disgust, powerful enough through their connection that Edgar felt a twinge of nausea. "After what I've done for you, after what I went through for you, after I saved you from that thing _again_ , you fucking- if you knew- if you had any idea- I should just- I should just fucking leave you here, I should just leave you here with that thing, I should just-"

And Scriabin's breath caught, his body moving with the force of each fast and heavy breath. "Just- leave you in here, leave you in here with it, just you, just you in here, with that thing, just you, you'd have no idea, you wouldn't know what to do, you'd have no idea in here, with that thing, in here, in here-"

Edgar reached out and took hold of his shoulders, and he expected Scriabin to shake him off but he didn't seem to notice. He was panting hard now, shaking uncontrollably, and as far as Edgar could tell, staring at something that wasn't him. The little yarn replicas had all disappeared.

He could catch it across their connection now, memories of fear, confusion, adrenaline, anger and offense, and then pain, terrible terrible pain. He could almost see it in relief against the shape of it, a kind of ripping, tearing feeling. It was familiar to him, now that he saw it in reflection... and, he was sure, it came from the same source. 

Scriabin, after all, had encountered it before he had. 

He'd never told him what had actually happened. He'd never talked about it, described it, gave him anything but guilt trips for it with no details. The illusion of strength and distance that was always so precious to him. 

"I'm not- I'm not-" It was senseless as Scriabin kept hyperventilating. Pain swirled between them, that sensation of losing control, of emotions becoming too powerful to be stopped no matter how you tried. Pain in one way, and then an indescribable loss, and then pain again, and it rose and fell, over and over.

The pain was familiar, the loss was familiar, the hideous violation of having something taken away that you could never get back, and Edgar could hear it echoing in himself, he could feel it aching through his body again, and he grit his teeth to try and strengthen his resolve. No. He couldn't do that, not now. If he lost control then he'd spiral down with Scriabin, the two of them feeding their mutual trauma, and then who knew what would happen to them? Something in him said it'd be worse than death.

The pain wanted to come forward, it wanted to echo, it wanted to join hands with Scriabin's in commiseration, let itself be dragged further underwater. His body ached, his shoulder throbbed in pain and he wasn't sure if it was his own.

"Scriabin, Scriabin, shh. Come on, listen to me. Listen to me." Edgar shifted closer to him so he could try to shake him to some kind of awareness. Scriabin tried for words but couldn't find them, making inarticulate strange gasping sounds. Edgar slid one hand from his shoulder to his face, trying to get him to look at him. Scriabin was breathing hard through his mouth, and he looked afraid, and he could feel the anger at looking afraid, and anger at a dozen things he couldn't quite name or put together.

Scriabin had said he was trying not to have a breakdown himself... even he had his limits.

His cheek was hot underneath Edgar's hand, he was shaking pitifully and he could feel from him anger and the sharp and powerful desire to push him away, to push his touch away but it didn't connect to action. Something was severed, or something was stronger, and that came with that breathless fury and frustration. In every way imaginable, from every angle Edgar could see and feel him from, he did not want this to be happening, and he was fighting with everything he had to make it stop.

"Scriabin, come on. Look at me." Edgar, desperate and struggling to separate Scriabin's emotions from his own, let a senseless smile find a brief place. "If you're not already, I can't tell with your glasses in the way." And he laughed, faint and weak, to which Scriabin made a strained whine. Edgar ducked his head to follow as Scriabin tried to curl into himself. "If you can't look at me, at least listen to my voice. You can hear me, I know you can hear me. I wasn't there when it happened, but I'm here now, so it's not happening. You're okay, it's not happening."

Scriabin was still hyperventilating, still locked away from him where he couldn't reach. He had to do something, but what to do? Edgar struggled to recall, dug back into memories that felt out of focus in the wave of feeling drowning him. He had to remember, he _had_ to.

He wrapped his arms around Scriabin and pulled him hard into a hug. 

It took a second for it to register, and then, as he expected, Scriabin tried to free himself. Edgar dug his fingers into his coat and shut his eyes in focus. Scriabin shoved at him, made angry sounds of effort as he tried to break away, kicked and writhed in his arms but he couldn't break his grip. He could feel Scriabin's heart pounding, the heat from his face, and the slow weakening of a body already close to exhaustion.

Scriabin's anger had a focus now, his frustration pointed at a target outside of himself. That was good, that was at least some indication of coming back to the moment.

"I'm here, I'm _here_ ," Edgar said, with his teeth gritted as he kept his hold. "I'm not going to let you go."

Scriabin made another one of those strange sounds, something shivering through him that made his struggles quiet with a throb of despair. He was still breathing hard and harsh, but he could feel the frantic pace of his thoughts slowing, just a little. The slow winding down of a tape coming close to its end.

"I'm not going to let you go," Edgar said again as Scriabin stayed quiet in his arms, gulping for breath. "It's okay. Calm down and try to breathe. No one is going to hurt you."

Scriabin took in a few sharp breaths, trying for words with a sudden urgency. Of course it would take the desire to say something to get him to focus. "All you ever do is hurt me," he managed to get out, wavering. 

"What else do I do to you?"

Scriabin's heart was still pounding, but his breathing was slowing a little. "You force things on me I don't want." It didn't have the strength he no doubt intended.

"Like this right now, right?"

"Yes." Scriabin swallowed, another fraction closer to regaining his self-control. "You always do this. You don't care at all about what _I_ want."

"I'm not caring about it right now."

"Yes."

"I'm right here, not caring about it. And so are you," Edgar said, quietly, by his ear. "You're here with me, even if you don't want to be."

Scriabin breathed for a few seconds in silence, tension draining out of him slowly. "...Yeah, I am."

"Okay, okay." Edgar loosened his grip on him a little - he didn't realize how hard he'd been holding onto him. No wonder Scriabin had had trouble breathing. "Okay."

He could still feel it, trembling just outside of their tenuous grip of the situation. The faint pulse of memories underneath what passed for reality here, a slight slip all it would take to fall back into them. Edgar could sense, could imagine the bone beneath his feet, the flesh wrapped around his limbs, but he couldn't let it in. He couldn't let the thoughts stay.

And he could feel, from Scriabin, a similar trembling effort, the strain of keeping his own demons at bay. Scriabin had kept his trauma as much of a secret as he could... but Edgar still remembered the horrible wounds he'd seen on him. And he could feel it trying to invade his thoughts - a sudden and painful realization of who he was, what they were facing, and the terror of failure. Of doubting himself, being unsure if this was a fight they could win.

Something pinning him down, something tearing its way through his body, something ripped away from him that he could never get back. He couldn't tell which one of them it was coming from. For all that Scriabin kept his secrets, at the moment, it felt like the only things that had changed between them were the details. The core of it felt the same.

It felt so close, it felt like all it would take was one push. One thread to snap for them both to be lost. Edgar couldn't let that happen. He couldn't lose him.

That thought came with a tinge of hesitation, but in his current state he couldn't hide it, and it flowed into the storm between them. And he heard, felt, an echo to it, something warm underneath, something soothing and something present.

"Stay here with me," Edgar whispered, focusing on that warm feeling, trying to let it override all other thoughts. "I don't want to lose you. Don't let go of me."

Scriabin didn't say anything at first, emotion flowing that answered instead. He sought that same soothing thing that Edgar did, he could feel it. That same fervent attempt to grasp at anything that might save him from the abyss of his damage. 

"You're the one holding on to me," he said, finally, weakly.

"I am." Edgar took in a deep and deliberate breath. "We have to stay here, together. Neither of us can go back, we have to stay here."

"I know what a flashback is, Edgar." Scriabin's voice was approaching its normal confidence, albeit slowly, and that was reassuring. "You don't have to explain it to me, you have them constantly."

"I've never seen you have one before."

"Of course you haven't. I'd never let-" And he stopped himself, a little twinge of tension going through him. "I don't have them. I can't have them. I'm not as weak as you."

It was a transparent lie, and it ached.

"I'm not like you. I'm not as weak as you, I'm nothing like you. I'm not like you." And Scriabin's breathing got loose and trembly again, he could feel his heart begin to race. It wasn't the same pain as whatever that thing had done to him, but it didn't have to be. Edgar knew this pain, he'd felt it from him countless times. It'd be the perfect stepping stone for Scriabin's shaky self-control to slip away from him again. "I'm not you."

His breathing caught, he could feel him warming under his arms, tension running all the way through him. In his current state, Scriabin couldn't hide it or fight it as he usually did. It built through him powerfully, unrestrained and heavy. And the guilt Edgar always felt in response to that particular brand of pain led back to self-loathing, which led to self-doubt and blame and then he'd be right back in his own spiral. He could feel it coming and the even worse helplessness of being unable to stop it.

He'd read the books, both of them had read the books. He had to remember what to do. He knew what was happening, he knew what to do, it _wasn't_ hopeless if he could just remember and focus.

Edgar moved one hand up to bury it in Scriabin's hair, heard him make a soft noise he tried to choke back. It was soft and clean, it slid through his fingers easily and smoothly, and he focused as hard as he could on that sensation. He ran his fingers through it and he felt Scriabin shudder a little in his arms, and he focused on that as well. It shivered across the space between them, unfamiliar and foreign in the morass of pain they were stuck in, and thus easy to hold on to.

"I know you're not me," Edgar said softly, thinking about his breathing, about touching him, about making the movements as gentle as possible, about how Scriabin was shivering at them. He reached across to search for Scriabin's reaction, tried to track down something unfamiliar, anything but the blood and scars between them both, mixed together into something huge and terrible. "You're Scriabin. You're always Scriabin, no matter what happens. No matter what I try to make you."

Scriabin's breathing was uneven, he felt very warm and strangely fragile, like at any moment he might just dissolve into some kind of vibrating, confused, pleased particles of being. At least, he _thought_ it was pleased... Scriabin was feeling _something_ but he wasn't sure what it was. It didn't seem bad at least.

"I don't need you to tell me things I already know." Scriabin's voice shook. Edgar kept running one hand through his hair, tried to draw as much detail from it as possible.

It came to him suddenly, unbidden, with a quiet throb and a familiar ache, one he was so used to it was hard to see clearly. 

"You don't _need_ me to," Edgar said, quietly. "You want me to."

"Ah..." It was a wounded, stricken sound, and Scriabin dug his fingers into his back. Edgar struggled to differentiate what the emotions were, who they belonged to, but there were too many and they were too complicated. Betrayal, hurt, resentment, fear and hesitation, relief and gratitude, anger and frustration, desperation and that terrible, aching longing.

"Don't... tell me what I want," Scriabin eventually got out as he buried his face in Edgar's neck. There was pain at being exposed, he could feel it, humiliation and regret, resentment at having something taken from him, and again, he could feel that bridge being built, could feel his emotions slowly teetering from one negative to another. He caught from him the thought, or concept of _want_ , and it struggled to find where to point, and it turned back to pain, he didn't want pain, he wanted to escape, he didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be here, alone, with that thing, and to...

"Come on, come on," Edgar whispered to him as he shivered in his arms. "Don't do that, don't do that. You can't do that right now, we can't take it." He wasn't sure if he was echoing him intentionally or not. It had worked for one of them, would it work for the other? "You're here with me, you have to stay here. Focus." And he tugged, just the slightest bit, at a few strands of his hair between his fingers. "Do you feel that?"

"Of course I feel it." Scriabin took in a sharp breath as another shudder went through him. "Can you not tell that I can? Unbelievable."

Attacks he knew, insults he knew, that was a good sign. "What does it feel like? I can't tell if you like it."

"Of course you can't, you emotionally-stunted robot." Although, he shivered again with a little faint sound when Edgar accidentally scratched his scalp on another pass. "I'm surprised you haven't asked me to explain what a hug feels like to you yet."

"How does it feel to you?"

"Really? _Really_? God _damn_ it. I can't even have a PTSD flashback in peace without you asking me how _you_ feel, you idiot. Unbelievable."

The pain, the threat, the shadow was fading in the face of his annoyance. Sure, Scriabin was lashing out at him, but that meant he was _here_.

And when he'd asked how it made Scriabin feel, he'd of course turned it around on him. Another reassuringly familiar maneuver.

"Nnnh." Scriabin twisted a little in his arms when Edgar dug his hand back into his hair to run it through again. He let out a shaking breath. "Damn it."

"What? Do you want me to stop? You still haven't told me if you like it or not." Edgar was smiling, although he wasn't sure why. "This is what long hair is for, isn't it?"

"Long hair is for looking beautiful," Scriabin said, easily and as haughty as ever, which kept Edgar's smile in place. "Not that you'd know anything about that."

"No, not really." Edgar closed his eyes. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Nh." He shifted again, then he huffed. "Fine, I'll just _show_ you, you can see for yourself so you won't ask me any more stupid questions."

Edgar's hair was much shorter than Scriabin's, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Scriabin's hand slid up to where his hair fell the longest, and for a second just stayed there. Edgar shivered himself as goosebumps went over him, although he couldn't quite place why. The sensation was just so _strange_.

Scriabin ran it through his fingers, he could feel the tiny pinprick points of pressure against his scalp, the scratch of his nails and Edgar made a faint sound he didn't intend. It felt _weird_ , that was the only way he could describe it, it just felt so _strange_. It wasn't like anything he knew or was familiar with. It sent something like static across his skin, a kind of strange anticipation. He didn't understand it, although it wasn't unpleasant, and even in the face of that, he didn't want him to stop, and he didn't understand that either.

Edgar made another faint sound under his breath, he shifted a little himself unconsciously to try and get out some of the confused _feeling_ it gave him, that tiny fuzz of energy. 

"Not so simple, is it?" Scriabin said, and he could hear a smile in his voice. "Do you want me to stop?"

He didn't, but he somehow couldn't say that. He didn't have a good reason, he couldn't say it without a good reason.

"Okay, okay..." Edgar's face twitched as Scriabin tugged, just slightly. "I get your point."

"Hmph." Although Scriabin was still smiling, and he pulled back enough so he could see it on his face. No doubt he wanted Edgar to see it, that familiar smug look whenever he thought he'd won something. "You see, it's not _that_ hard to think about someone other than yourself, is it?"

It was an easy invitation, one he'd heard so many times that it didn't feel worth engaging. Scriabin's eyes were hidden, but he could still see two faint dried trails running down from beneath his glasses. 

"Are you feeling a little better now?" Edgar said, and Scriabin's smile disappeared almost instantly. He turned his head away, pulled his arms away from him to cross them.

"Like you care." It had no heart in it, he could tell.

"That was a little close, wasn't it..." Edgar let out a breath, trying to let relief sink in enough to ease the tension. "That's probably just what that thing wants..."

_Us hurting each other, instead of protecting each other from hurt._

"It's smarter than I gave it credit for." Scriabin looked away at the nothing around them. "Its methods for trying to undermine us are getting very sophisticated."

"It hasn't hijacked any of the dreams you made, has it?" And he caught that warning pulse of anger from him again at questioning his control. "It hijacked one you said I made for myself... has it hijacked any I made for you?"

_Maybe ones I made for you were stronger._

Scriabin twitched, he could feel a spark of surprise before he shoved it away. "Tch! How presumptuous! You really do think the world of yourself, don't you? Your virtue is bottomless."

"Has it?"

"You've never made one." Scriabin pointed at him, and a deep and quiet hurt flowed underneath his normal disdain. "Why would you? I'm just your voice, after all. You never think about me unless you have to. Even if you had the inclination or the ability to shape reality here, you'd have no idea how to even begin to bring me comfort. You bastard."

The insult had no bite to it. "You already told me what you want. You showed it to me."

Scriabin did not like that idea. "I showed you what you wanted to see, what you'd understand. It was no more real than those little toys I made."

"I know you want to be free." And hurt flowed again, softer and from a different direction. "I know you want to be free from me."

And Scriabin's brow furrowed, his head turned away a little.

"I know you want to leave." Edgar's voice grew softer, and he stared down at the blank space between them. "You've already tried."

_You abandoned me._ The constant, quiet accusation held his pain together, refused to let it heal.

He felt something from Scriabin, muddled and resentful, guilt and frustration and that longing again.

"Maybe that's it... maybe if you made a dream where I wasn't in it, maybe that'd make you happy. Can you do that?" Edgar looked back up to him, although somewhere he didn't want to. His throat felt tight. "Can you make me not exist?"

Scriabin made a startling, pained sound. For all his efforts, he couldn't hide the powerful guilt and longing that acccompanied it, or the hurt from an unfamiliar source.

"I..." Scriabin started, and he took hold of his upper arms and for a second Edgar was afraid he'd be sick. He coughed, shivered with tension, then seemed to regain his composure. "You're the primary- the initial consciousness in this mind. For all that I can control it, the landscape I carve things out of still comes from you. I grow things, but the soil is still yours. I can't just..."

"I've had dreams where I wasn't myself, I'm pretty sure... where I was just watching something else happen, like it was on TV." Edgar scratched his face, his eyes back down. Something about this left a rock in his stomach. "Could you do that? Make a dream with just you where I was watching?" And something rose up in him, ugly, nauseating, rebelling at the thought, some remnant of his self-preservation. "Could you make me... your voice?"

Edgar winced at a flood of fear and anger, shame and guilt he almost didn't recognize when it didn't come from him. Scriabin's hands were tight around himself, he was shaking again. One of them felt sick, or maybe both of them did.

_I don't want you to stop existing,_ came to him. It was in his voice, he was pretty sure, but he wasn't sure whose thought it was.

"That wouldn't work," Scriabin said, grasping desperately for his normal tone, for something to stabilize himself. "When I take control, you aren't there." And it caught in his throat, he choked on the idea and again that wave of pain came from him. "Meaning, you aren't _conscious_. You're still _there_ , of course. You wouldn't be able to be my..." And he couldn't get the word out.

"That's how it works in real life... that's not how it has to work in dreams, is it?" It felt like lead inside him now, he wasn't sure what was driving him to keep speaking. "Would that make you feel better? Would that help you heal, as you put it?"

Scriabin shuddered again, the air between them filled with disgust and hate and fear and he could feel, pick out amidst it all, a terrible and abiding _loneliness_. Whose was it?

"I told you..." Scriabin said, with a shaky swallow. "I told you, you have no idea what to do for me."

A tinge of warmth came from somewhere within, and Edgar tried to follow it. "So... you don't want to get rid of me?"

Scriabin made an unhappy sound.

"You... want me."

And Scriabin made another unhappy sound, going rigid with tension. Hurt emanated from him in waves.

"I can't get what I want," Scriabin said, weak and angry.

That longing again. Edgar wished he could interpret it, understand it completely for once so he'd know what to do. He just wanted to know what to do, he wanted to make all the pain stop. That was the whole point of this, that was what they both so desperately wanted and yet they just couldn't do it. They just kept failing at it, over and over and over.

Maybe it just wasn't possible to stop hurting. Maybe he'd never stop hurting again. All this was was the tape rewinding before it put them right back where they started, doomed to the same unhappy ending.

Edgar looked back up to find Scriabin's head turned away, his attention fixed on anything but Edgar's face. What hope was there for either of them? What else could they do? For all that they'd done to each other...

_For_ each other...

Darkness reached for them both without end, and in the face of it, they had their reflection. They yanked the other into their arms, forced each other to look and listen, refused to let the other sink and drown. Instead of spiraling down, they orbited around each other, pulling and pushing like spinning magnets.

Whatever that was... if it couldn't lift them up, at least it didn't let them fall. That was something, wasn't it? That was valuable. Anything that let them keep their head above water mattered. What they did here mattered.

This _mattered_.

Edgar watched him in silence for a few moments, noting the slight rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed, the rare physicality of him. That strange urge came to him again, although he didn't know from where, and he reached out to brush some strands of Scriabin's hair away from his face. Scriabin jumped in response, turning to face him with an expression somewhere close to indignant. He expected him to slap his hand away.

Edgar tucked some strands behind his ear. Scriabin looked at him with a strange kind of betrayal. He was struggling fiercely with something.

"I can't get what I want," he said, in much the same tone of voice.

"What is it you want?" Edgar let his hand linger by the side of his face.

Scriabin stared at him, furious in some unexplained way, his face twitching with it. He could feel so much effort from him as he fought to maintain his resolve, to do _something_ although Edgar wasn't sure what.

Then, without warning, Scriabin leaned forward and thumped his head against Edgar's chest, his forehead at the base of his neck.

"Fine, peasant. If you want to show proper devotion to your lord and master, then I _suppose_ I can indulge your pathetic groveling. If you so want to worship me, then fine, but you better do a damn good job of it after everything you've done. You have no idea what an exceptional honor it is to be near me, much less even touch me."

Uncharacteristically transparent for him, but in a way, that was the point. There wasn't any other way he could do this.

_An exceptional honor to touch you... no one else can touch you._ And that thought hurt, a lot, guilt in a way a perfect complement to that yearning he felt from him. _The only one you can ask to touch you is..._

But he'd never ask. He couldn't.

"Alright, alright," Edgar said, as he ran a hand over his hair.

"Say thank you." Scriabin sounded a bit muffled.

"I'm not going to do that."

"I'm doing this as a favor to _you_." Scriabin shifted when Edgar accidentally scratched a little, although he didn't move away. Edgar imagined it as a similar feeling of it being too much in some undefined way. "Nnh."

"Of course you are." Edgar closed his eyes, trying to focus on sensory details. Scriabin's hair flowed naturally through his fingers, he could picture its sheen, he tried to identify the smell of it and couldn't. Scriabin's body in his arms felt wiry and thin, a twin to his own. 

_You don't change shape anymore, do you...?_ Edgar thought to no one in particular. _Whenever I see you, you always look like this._

"I'm perfect the way I am." Because of course, what else would he say? "Why else would you practically beg to touch me?"

"It makes you calm down and stop being awful for a few seconds, for one thing." Edgar kept petting him, although he felt him stiffen a little at that.

"You don't _make_ me do anything, what a laughable idea. The only reason you're doing this is because I'm _letting_ you do it, as a _favor_ to you so you'll stop your pitiful begging for my attention. It's astonishing how shameless you are, how you veritably blackmail me into taking care of all your little emotional foibles-" And then Scriabin writhed a little in his arms with a shudder that ran all the way through his voice. "Nnh- fuck-"

"It doesn't make you do anything, right," Edgar said, still scratching his scalp lightly. He didn't think it'd have such a powerful effect, but it was, in some way, sort of gratifying.

Scriabin pressed his head harder against him with another strained, quiet sound. "Bastard. You're really tempting me, you know that?"

"Tempting you to do what?" _Don't hurt me,_ came to him softly, without its typical fear. 

"Let myself indulge in something stupid. It's not like it'll matter in the end anyway... you're not going to remember this. Not the important parts of it anyway. If my options are wallowing in self-pity or enjoying a temporary illusion for a moment's respite... well, maybe I should follow your lead." He could hear a certain smile in his voice, which was never a good sign. "That's how you started all this, after all. I might as well finish it."

"What are you talking about?" Edgar said, wary, as his hand slowed.

"Stupid boy. It'd be endearing at times if it wasn't so goddamn frustrating." Scriabin slowly pushed himself away from him, his movements deliberate in a way that was making Edgar feel nervous. He could see himself in his glasses, his brow furrowed with a worried frown. Scriabin, however, was still smiling. "You wanted to give me what I want, didn't you? Then let's pretend you can."

"What are you talking about...?"

Scriabin reached out and pressed a hand to Edgar's cheek, prompting an instinctual flinch, but it didn't seem like pain was on his mind. He stayed there for a second, a long second, just staring at him, and for some reason Edgar's heart beat faster. _You want me to do something, don't you? But what is it? I don't want to mess this up._

Scriabin drew his face towards his, slowly, enough so for Edgar to be aware of the hair on his arms raising, a tremble of heat running through him as adrenaline woke every part of him up. He didn't know what Scriabin was planning, but something in his body was panicking about it. It didn't _seem_ like Scriabin was going to hurt him, but he'd been blindsided by him before.

They were close to each other now, enough so for him to feel Scriabin's breath across his face, and he closed his eyes and he wasn't sure why.

Some blurry, loud noise broke to his right, like a rock through the still surface of a pond, and Edgar squinted and struggled through air suddenly thick and hard to breathe.

_Fuck!_ Scriabin sounded a little distant. _God damn it..._

"Mr. Edgar!" The syllables finally coalesced into words, and Edgar groaned as he tried to open his eyes.

"Mr. Edgar! Mr. Edgar!" Something was shaking him, he noticed now, and Edgar reluctantly started to move. His body ached, his head felt heavy and his mouth dry. It was dark, only lit by his alarm clock, and Todd was standing by his bed, one hand on his shoulder while he clutched his bear to him with the other. He looked, unsurprisingly, terrified. "Wake up!"

"Ngh..." Edgar tried to regain the ability to speak, running a hand roughly over his face. His eyes felt swollen. How long had he been asleep? "What? What is it?"

"Mr. Edgar, something moved in the closet!"

It didn't wake him up immediately, but it was pretty close. Edgar fumbled for his glasses on his nightstand.

_Fuck... fuck, it can't be... if he's seeing it, then... no, it can't be. There's no way it could..._ Scriabin sounded unsteady.

"Something moved?"

"Yeah, I heard it! I heard it in there." Todd clutched Shmee tighter, shivering. "It was moving, I heard it..."

"I... I bet it's nothing." Edgar didn't think that at all, but he hoped saying it would help it feel more real. "There's no way anything could come in here..."

"Mr. Edgar, I'm scared." 

"It's okay." In the face of someone else's, he placed his own fear to one side. "Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

_Scriabin? Can you tell if something's here or not?_

_We're both filtering things through the same faulty processors at this point... it's not easy for me to sift through all of it either. I'm not sure._

"Mr. Edgar, what if something's in there!" Todd squeaked. "What if it's going to eat me?"

"It's okay, it's okay." Edgar held up a hand, a sudden quiet heaviness settling on his shoulders. He looked in the direction of the hallway. "It's not after you."

A moment, then Todd's large eyes began to glisten. "But what if it eats _you_ , Mr. Edgar? Then what am I going to do?"

"It's not going to eat me." Edgar stood up, rolling his bad shoulder for a second or two in a futile effort to drive away the ache. "It's probably nothing."

_What are we going to do if there actually is something in there?_ For some reason, Edgar thought about how Scriabin's hair had felt in his hands. Details were fading, but certain images and sensations were sticking, at least for now.

_You're probably going to do nothing. It's going to be my problem, if there is something._ Scriabin sighed. _Everything is always my problem._

_What are you going to do then?_

_I guess we'll find out, huh?_ Strangely tired. Edgar took a deep breath, braced himself, and headed for the door. He didn't see anything in the lightless hallway, his eyes struggling to differentiate all the different shades of black and grey.

_Should I turn on the light...? No, that might provoke it..._

Todd bumped into him from behind, using him as a shield between him and whatever it was. He was wheezing faintly in fear.

Edgar took a few steps into the hallway, one hand on the wall to brace himself, everything alight in a fight or flight response. _Should I have grabbed a weapon...? With a thing like that, would it even matter?_

Exhaustion and tension both united in the common goal of making him shake uncontrollably. Within, somewhere, he could feel Scriabin on edge, prepared in whatever way he could be prepared for something, shaking in just the same way. Boundaries got hazy when he was just waking up, not that they were particularly strong lately anyway.

He stepped lightly, carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, and he glanced behind to see Todd hanging onto the bedroom doorjamb like it'd protect him somehow. Edgar stood still a moment to listen and heard nothing but Todd, and Scriabin's, quiet breathing. His own was shallow in the spaces of theirs.

Slowly, slowly, Edgar approached the door of the closet. He stayed close to the opposite wall, as far away from it as he could get, watching the door in the darkness for any kind of movement or hint of intent.

_There isn't anything there._ Edgar swallowed. _There can't be. Todd must have been hearing things. It's easy for him to get scared and work himself up. This has happened before, and it's always been nothing. It'll be nothing again this time._

_Has it happened before?_ It was a question that would have normally been mocking, but instead sounded strangely sincere.

_It's nothing. It can't be anything but nothing._ It was hard to hear anything over his heart hammering in his ears. Everything in him was prickling, electrity so fierce it felt like it'd shake him apart, and underneath all of it there was that contrasting, maddening feeling of being so _tired_. He just wanted to _sleep_ , he didn't want to do this because he was afraid but also because he was just _tired_.

Edgar reached out a trembling hand to the knob of the closet, touched it lightly to make sure there was nothing strange about its shape or how it felt, then swallowed again as he took proper hold of it. Fear stood in his way, it blocked the path to his hand, and he took a deep breath.

_I have nothing to fear._ He closed his eyes in focus. _The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid._

He felt that pulse of resentment and instinctual denial that came from Scriabin whenever God came up, but nothing further. For all he disliked it, he had to recognize this mantra for what it was - a cloak that'd shield Edgar and allow him to move again.

_I will not be afraid._

He pulled the door open.

Not all the way at first. Just a crack, then when nothing burst from the darkness shrieking for him, he inched it open further. He waited on pins and needles for any sound, any movement, and none came. Hesitant, he leaned his head around the door to look properly inside. In the darkness, he couldn't see much of anything, but as far as he could tell, no hideous abominations in an affront to reality resided therein.

He let out a long shivering breath, pressing a hand to his chest where his heart was pounding. Todd had been hearing things after all.

He heard a similiar sigh of relief internally.

_Did you have a plan at all for what you'd do if something was in there...?_ Edgar kept staring into the darkness, as if to make sure.

_Did you?_ Scriabin's breathing was shaky. He could catch a flash of it between them, an image of what it could have been, what had surged out of Johnny's face in that second of terror, and he shook his head physically to try and get rid of it. He wasn't dreaming, or at least, he was relatively sure he wasn't.

"It's okay, Todd." Edgar focused enough to keep his voice level. "There's nothing in here."

"Really?" Todd squeaked, his voice far and small.

"I don't see anything. I think it's okay."

"Are you sure...?" 

Edgar shut the closet door and headed back over to Todd, trying to hide how wobbly he was on his feet. Relief blended very easily with exhaustion, and he wasn't sure which was responsible for how unsteady his legs felt.

_God, I'm so tired,_ Scriabin said, so quietly that he thought he'd thought it himself for a moment.

"Whatever it is, or whatever it was, it wasn't in there. Or at least, I didn't see it in there." Edgar made his way past Todd to sit down on his bed, and let out a sigh at getting off his feet.

"You don't think it was hiding?" Todd shuffled away from the doorway to stand closer to him, holding onto Shmee for dear life.

"If it was in there, it would have eaten me when it saw me, right?" Edgar said, without any real emotion. "I'm the one it wants, so it'd have no reason not to attack. But I'm okay, so it can't have been in there."

He got the feeling Scriabin wanted to say something, then the kind of sigh that came with a shrug or shake of the head that said it wasn't worth the effort.

"I guess..." Although Todd didn't sound convinced. He was shaking in the darkness. "Um, would it be okay if I slept in here for tonight...?"

It wouldn't be the first time Todd had gotten scared and wanted to sleep on the floor in his room. In a way, Edgar couldn't blame him. He was the only adult around - who else could Todd rely on to protect him?

_We should really get him an air mattress or something..._ Scriabin said, although it sounded like he was talking to himself.

"It won't hurt your back too much?"

"It'll hurt more to get eaten by creatures." 

"That's true, I suppose." Edgar scratched his face - the area near his scars was tingling again. That was usually a bad sign...

_Scriabin?_

_Mm... it's not me, it's not you feeling something... I'm not sure... I'm not sure._

"I don't want to go back out there." Todd was still shaking, and his eyes looked huge in the darkness. "Can you get my stuff...?"

_There wasn't anything in the closet, he was just hearing things. There's nothing out there. There's nothing to be scared of. It'll only take a second._ Everything felt like it took too much effort, everything felt fuzzy and his eyes hurt and stuck whenever he blinked. _Only a little longer, then I can..._ And he hesitated, suddenly cold. _I can try to get back to sleep..._

Scriabin made a sound in his head, a sort of conflicted hum. _One thing at a time. You're getting weird again._

_Mm._ With some effort, he managed to stand up. "Sure... I'll be just a minute."

"Be careful," Todd squeaked as Edgar headed for the door. He turned on the hall light this time - no need to go wandering around in the dark. It'd play tricks with his mind.

_You definitely don't need any of that right now._

_Why aren't you getting weird too...?_

_I'm way better at hiding how I feel than you are._ With a tinge of his normal pride, an experimental prod at Edgar's ego. It didn't register. _Just get it done and go back to bed._

Now lit, nothing in the hallway seemed out of the ordinary. The closet door was ajar, but he still saw nothing inside. Nothing to worry about. He headed to the living room, a little shadowy without its own light on, giving the closet a wide berth.

Edgar went over to the couch and gathered up all the blankets and pillows he could hold. Todd sleeping on the floor worried him, he was sure it couldn't be comfortable despite Todd's protests to the contrary, but he couldn't find the heart to refuse him. Edgar wished he could stay close to someone he could trust to keep him safe. There was nothing protecting him now.

_I'm trying,_ Scriabin said, a bit sulky, but he didn't have the energy.

Edgar turned back around to head to his bedroom. There was someone standing at the end of the hallway, by the door.

Thin, skeletal, starkly lit in the lifeless lights. Something sinuous rose from the floor, thrust into its back to hold it up like a puppeteer. It held a knife in one hand, up and at the ready. It had two black holes in its face.

Edgar simply froze in place. He was sure that he stopped breathing, almost sure that his heart had stopped along with time. Everything in his mind flatlined, a high sustained beep that came with death. The Johnny thing stayed where it was, although he wasn't sure that'd be the case if he blinked.

He stayed, frozen, staring, until something dimly started to come through the shrieking single tone in his mind. Someone was calling his name.

_Edgar! Edgar! Wake up!_

He was awake... wasn't he?

He moved his clumsy tongue, opened his mouth. Somewhere, he was thinking, although he wasn't sure where. "Todd? Can you hear me?"

"Yeah?" He could hear him shaking.

"Do you see anything in the hallway right now? Outside my room?" Edgar kept his eyes fixed on the Johnny thing. It tilted its head to one side, it was smiling. He wasn't sure how his voice was as calm as it was.

"I don't see anything," Todd said, although he sounded hesitant. It wouldn't be hard for him to put together the pieces of why he'd ask.

_It's not there... it's not real. It's not real._ Scriabin sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well. _It's just a hallucination. It's not real, it can't hurt us. It can't hurt us. Edgar, are you listening? I know you can hear me._

_I am listening._ Edgar wasn't feeling anything, something in him had turned off. The thing at the end of the hallway kept staring at him, as best it could.

_It's not real. Todd can't see it, it's not real. It can't hurt you. The visual portion of your brain is just freaking out._

_I know._ Edgar stayed where he was. He blinked, then the thing was gone. The hallway was just as empty as before. _This has happened before._

Not exactly like this. The details always changed.

"Are you seeing things again?" Todd called.

"Yes, I think so." Still calm, not entirely here. He felt cold, something prickling over him, perhaps the remnants of adrenaline.

Todd poked his head around the doorjamb. "Remember, whatever you're seeing isn't real! It can't hurt you. Shmee says he's going to protect us, it'll be okay."

"Right."

"You should come over here. Shmee says it's better if you see real things when you're seeing fake things."

"Right." It was a herculean effort, the movement of concrete, but Edgar put one foot in front of the other. Once started, it flowed well enough, and he walked down the hallway, or at least someone's body that was ostensibly his did so.

_Edgar, really..._ Scriabin sounded a little concerned. _It's always so disorienting when you do this..._

_I don't think you really want the alternative, do you?_

Scriabin made an unhappy sound.

Edgar made it into his bedroom, turned off the hall light, and closed the door behind him. Once shut, his heart started beating again, he could feel air coming into his lungs. Todd was tugging at the blankets in his arms, and Edgar handed them over with a shake of his head.

"Do you think it's related to what I heard in the closet?" Todd was, sadly, familiar with this, which always made Edgar feel terrible. If he could stop doing it, he would, even if it was just for Todd's sake.

"Perhaps." Edgar went to sit down on his bed, shaking hard. He was surprised he'd been standing at all. He was mildly puzzled at his lack of reaction.

_Probably shock..._

_It's not the first time you've done this, certainly._

Todd settled the blankets and pillows on the floor in a dissheveled little mess by the side of his bed. Edgar registered this dimly, somewhere else far away. At least Todd could believe that something would protect him, that something could save him.

_I'm trying,_ Scriabin said, sounding a little more hurt.

It was all hitting him now, and Edgar's head began pounding. He pressed a hand to his temple like he could force it out of him.

"Ugh, I'm so tired..." He didn't intend to say that outloud.

"Yeah, you weren't asleep really long. Sorry about waking you up..." Todd shrank behind Shmee, looking off to one side. "I just really thought I was going to get eaten..."

With Todd's luck, it was a legitimate concern. "I know, don't feel bad. It's alright. I'm just tired... I hope I can get back to sleep." _And don't just end up in another nightmare... this is a goddamn Möbius strip of horrors._

_You have to sleep._ Scriabin sounded a little uncertain. _You've seen what chronic sleep deprivation did to Nny._

_I can see why he didn't want to now._ Edgar rubbed at his forehead. _It really is getting hard to tell what's real..._

"Oh, Shmee can help." Todd shook his teddy bear. "Shmee takes care of nightmares for me, he's really good at stopping them and making sure nothing bad happens to me in them. I know he can see into your brain a little, so maybe he can help you with your nightmares too."

Edgar really wanted to believe that he could. He wanted to believe in anything that could help him, that could just make this stop.

_I'm trying._ Again, and even weaker this time. _I don't... I don't need Shmee's help._

"Given what's been going on around here... Shmee must be working overtime." Edgar managed to give Todd a weak smile, which he returned somewhat gratefully.

"He's been working hard! But he says it's not as bad as before. It's still better here than somewhere else." Todd looked down. "It's too bad Scriabin can't help you like he can help you."

He felt a weak flare of anger and offense from Scriabin, expected and a bit comforting since it meant he still had some life in him.

"Scriabin helps me in his own ways," Edgar said, still strangely emotionless. Something about that didn't seem right, which didn't make sense. It was true, to an extent. He just also hurt him a lot. 

_As I've said, in so many words... they don't cancel each other out._

"Shmee says he'll try to let you sleep. I don't know how, but I hope it'll work. And I'll try not to wake you up this time, okay?"

"Okay, thank you." And Edgar rubbed at his eyes. "I really need some rest..."

"Don't worry, I'll be real quiet." Todd flopped down on the little nest he'd made, Shmee tucked in tight under his arm. "You won't even know I'm here! I'm good at that."

_Thanks to his goddamn parents no doubt,_ Scriabin said, low and dark.

"Thanks." Edgar sighed, feeling like he had to say more but couldn't figure out what. He lay down on the bed, setting his glasses beside Scriabin as usual, and his eyes drifted shut automatically. He pictured, for a moment, the thing he'd seen in the hallway. It opening the door.

_Edgar, no. Don't. I'm going to try and get rid of that. Or hide it somewhere. Just let me handle it. Try and go to sleep._

_I don't know if I can..._

_It won't happen again. I'm going to make sure of it. You create the clay and I'll make the walls. Nothing's going to get through this time._

_What kind of dream is it going to be? I am going to dream, aren't I?_

_...You don't have much choice. At this level of exhaustion, you're probably going to go right into REM sleep._

Edgar really didn't want to, but he had a feeling Scriabin was right. He was sure he'd read that in a book somewhere. 

_Besides, you need REM sleep anyway. That's the point of sleeping._ He could almost imagine Scriabin yawning. _Without it, your brain isn't going to accomplish much._

Edgar tried to remember if that was true, but he was too tired to make the connections properly. He found himself letting it go. _Then is it going to be one of your dreams, or one of mine?_

_...The goal of either is the same, isn't it? Some kind of solace or succor. If one doesn't work, I'll try something else. Something has to work. We have no choice. We have to keep trying._

He sounded so tired... Edgar wanted something to work, even if it was just for Scriabin's sake.

_What if it's another one like the last one...?_

Scriabin made a very annoyed sound. _I GUESS if you insist, I'll play your little fun observer role again... I do want to reiterate that I absolutely hate doing that in the one place where I don't have to._

_No, that's not what I meant..._ Edgar shivered a little. It was fading in and out of his memory, but he could still catch enough of it to hold on to. _One where we're..._ He tried to find a word, a way to describe it, and again fell short. _When we were in the white space, hiding. Like that._

He caught confusion from him, indecisiveness and wariness. _...Still remember that, do you? That won't last._

Edgar thought about Scriabin's hair again, the feel of it. He couldn't remember what it smelled like, and he wasn't sure why. He let the thought linger, unintentionally, only aware after a few moments of the feeling of Scriabin watching him, so to speak.

_I want to remember it,_ Edgar thought, softly.

Scriabin was quiet for a few moments. _I'm sure you think that._ Although it wasn't with much strength.

_I do._ His first thought was that that needed more words to sound sincere, but he couldn't find them. Even so, it felt like it shone plainly.

_I'm sure you think that._ Softly. _You would want to relive having a nervous breakdown. Your masochism knows no bounds. Don't you have enough breakdowns as it is? What's one more notch on your insanity bedpost?_

_Not that. You know what I mean._ Edgar wanted to argue with more thought and care, but couldn't manage it. He caught again a sort of resentful wariness, cautiousness and a tinge of that longing.

_...I do, although I doubt your sincerity. You didn't even understand it._ It showed in his voice, although not as strongly as usual. _I wonder if you'd actually be happy if I reconstructed it for you._

_I don't think I'll ever be happy again._

There was silence, and those fractured bits of concern that Scriabin couldn't quite hide from him.

_So typical for you to give up. I, however, never back down from a challenge,_ Scriabin said. _I always find ways to surprise you. It's almost not fun for me anymore._

_If you can do it, then go ahead._ Edgar felt heavy, like he couldn't move even if he wanted to. _Prove me wrong._ And exhaustion blurred his thoughts, brought words too simple and sincere. _Just protect me, please._

Something warm, something longing again, that same confused feeling he often got whenever he said those kind of things to him. _I'm going to. You'll see. You'll be sorry you doubted me._

_I always am._ He could feel it coming, the slowly strengthening onset of images and feelings as dreams began to encroach on his thoughts. Disoriented, fearful, barely thinking, more words came. _Please keep me safe. You're the only one who can._

Again that conflicted feeling of warmth and satisfaction, as well as doubt that didn't feel directed entirely at him. Scriabin twisted it into loops so he couldn't see where it pointed. _I'm going to. You'll see. Everything's under control. Everything's always under my control._

There were no guarantees. The thought came to him again, as it so often did nowadays, of falling asleep and just never waking up. Edgar didn't feel anything at the prospect, or maybe he just thought he didn't. He'd fallen asleep afraid before, although he wasn't sure how.

Something bad was going to happen, he was sure of it. It was going to follow him down, it wouldn't be denied. 

But there was only so long you could fight off sleep, particularly when you're lying on a bed in the dark with your eyes closed.

Something bad was going to happen, he was sure of it. It was the last waking thought he had before he slipped away.

He was sure of it.


End file.
